


Fight Back

by supervillainesses



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series, Gotham City Sirens (Comics)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-16 10:35:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3485075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supervillainesses/pseuds/supervillainesses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a drunken night out with a certain blonde jester and their resident cat burglar, Ivy tries to knock some sense (metaphorically speaking, of course) into Harley's head. A decision that may cost her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. For Once in Your Life

**I’m sorry for letting my inbox get so backed up, but I’m working on answering things as efficiently as possible.**

**Also, this is concept I’ve toyed with for awhile.**

Contains mentions of abuse and obscene amounts of fluff.

***

            When it came down to it, Harley was just naturally good at making friends. It was her smile, Pam decided. Something about the bouncing blonde’s smile was tantamount to a sunny day in their smoggy city. Pam despised Gotham; its tainted air and ratio of steel to green. It was her personal project to slowly reverse the numbers, or so she told herself, and that was why she stayed. It had nothing to do with her two barhopping friends.

            “Ya haven’t ordered anything, Red.” Harley was just at the edge of tipsy; the evidence, Pam found, was in the girl’s cheeks. The redness of her complexion acted like a terror meter in the younger girl. “Want me to getcha soda?”

            Pam spared Harley a quick, halfhearted smile. “No, Harl.”

            Harley pouted.

            “Yooooooooooo.”

            Selina, on the other hand, was positively smashed. The cat burglar was currently trying, to no avail, to seat herself on the stool beside Pam’s. Her short black hair was messier than usual, and her green eyes were starting to grow bloodshot. When Harley finally managed to boost the brunette onto the stool, she nearly fell into Ivy’s lap. She could smell the alcohol before she saw the large spill on the other woman’s dark jeans and tank top.

            “Guys,” when drunk, Selina had the uncanny ability of sounding as if she were from an entirely different region, like the most Italian-influenced areas of New York. “I think I found the guy I’m meant to be with—hic—forever.”

            Harley and Ivy met gazes for just a moment; Harley elected to speak first. “Okay, Selina. Who would that be?”

            With a shaky hand, Selina pointed across the bar. At a mirror. Where her own reflection was cast back. “That is one fine sonuva bitch if I ever saw one.”

            Harley grimaced. “Selina, Cat, honey baby, I think you’ve had enough.”

            “No way, I’ve still got six _more drinks_ on back order from the beer waiter.”

            “Bartender.”

            “Whatever.”

            Harley slipped behind Selina, patting her leg consolingly, and met Pam’s eyes in a meaningful way. They’d done this before. In a moment, Selina’s cell phone was in Pam’s hand and she ducked into the restroom with it. She sent a text to Bruce Wayne on the state of Selina Kyle’s condition, and within twenty minutes the on-again, off-again knight-in-shining-armor arrived in his butler-chauffeured car.

            Pam didn’t care for Bruce Wayne the way Harley did, and _certainly_ not the way Selina did. He was too gentile, and whenever they interacted he apparently forgot about that Christmas two years ago where she and Harley nearly killed him (a story that the two still laughed about every once in a while). Either Bruce Wayne was entirely too forgiving, or he didn’t have too many brain cells in his head.

            “Thanks, ladies.” Wayne took Selina’s practically comatose form from Harley. “Still can’t hold her liquor, after all these years. I’m glad you girls think enough of me to consult as a designated driver.”

            And there it was, the bland “I’m rich, white, and attractive” smile of his. Harley gushed at the sight, but a quick pinch to the rear from Pam set her straight. Harley liked Bruce because he’d once testified for her release from Arkham; he’d even been there for her on that zany day when Harley girl was declared sane and unleashed onto the general public. Just through the paper headlines alone, the story was one for the history books.

            “Mr. Wayne,” Harley spoke up. “Y’ain’t gonna take advantage of her, right?”

            His pointed brows flew upward. “I’d never dream of it.”

            “Good,” it was Selina who spoke up in a comically slurred drawl. “’Cause I’m not a _floozy_ , Bruce. Treat a girl to dinner. Then fill her up.”

            “Ya mean _feel_ , Selina.”

            Selina smirked dirtily. “Nah, I didn’t.”

            Pam took that as her cue to take Harley by the elbow and leave the bar altogether. They made it ten feet before Bruce called after them.

            “You ladies wouldn’t be in the mind for anything illegal tonight, are you?”

            Ivy, filled to the brim with annoyance, spun in his direction. A remark of “your girlfriend wouldn’t like your suggestive _tone_ , Mr. Wayne” was ready on her lips, but she stopped herself. He was still cradling Selina’s now sleeping form, looking down at her like she was worth more than the car he stood beside. On-again, off-again, yes, but still valid all the same. She sighed.

            “No, Mr. Wayne. No need to call in the feds. Harley and I are going to set in for a long night sobering up, thank you very much. Goodnight.”

            “Yeah,” Harley waved back at them with full arcs of her arm. “G’night, Mr. Wayne! And Selina! Be safe! Don’t do anything Red and I wouldn’t do! Well,” she chuckled, lowering her voice. “Not that it leaves them much to go on, eh?”

            It was Harley’s turn to share the same smirk Selina had; the two had obviously been rubbing off on each other. They were halfway back to the formerly abandoned building all three shared when Ivy was regretting her decision to leave her car home. It was a lovely spring night; the air was thick with humidity, but chilled from the last vestiges of a vanishing winter. The moistened cold air dragged across her skin in the way even velvet could leave burns over time.

            “Red, I’m cold.”

            Before Pam could even offer, Harley ducked under her arm and tucked herself in beneath Ivy’s coat. She nuzzled in to her side, her head rubbing against Ivy’s shoulder.

            “All better?” Pam asked, amused as always at Harley’s ability to stay on her feet even though she was entirely intoxicated.

            “You have the best hugs, Red.” Harley sighed, slipping her hand into the opposite pocket of Pam’s jeans.

            Pam stiffened when she felt Harley’s thumb hook into a belt loop; usually, it was all right, but once Harley had been just wasted enough on one of these walks home that she ended up falling down, taking Pam’s pants with her. It had been obscenely late then, too, but Ivy never quite forgot the potential threat of becoming an inadvertent flasher. She placed her hand around Harley’s, for insurance sake.

            “Oh?” Pam responded, seconds too late. It was all right; Harley’s thought processes were often slowed when drunk. Though, the fact that her response was slow might also mean that the few drinks she’d had while Selina and Harl were fighting over the jukebox and singing bad karaoke (without microphones; it wasn’t that sort of bar) were finally taking effect. “Why are my hugs the best?”

            “’Cause you smell nice,” Harley sighed contentedly, taking the corner of Pam’s jacket and inhaling deeply. “All rosy and sappy. When I close my eyes, I can almost think I’m in the woods or somethin’. But better, ’cause there ain’t nothing in the woods as soft as you. Well, except for bears.”

            Pam frowned. “I am _much_ softer than a bear.”

            “Well, how should _I_ know, Red? I’ve never touched a bear before! You never let me try when we go to the petting zoo.”

            “Just because you can vault over the fences into the exhibits doesn’t make it a _petting_ zoo, darling.”

            “Sure as hell does, if you try hard enough.”

            “You’re not touching a bear.”

            “But what if it’s like the boys? Bud and Lou are supposed to be vicious carnivores, but they’ve never so much as nipped at me.”

            “First of all, hyenas are scavengers. Second, Bud ripped the back out of your costume last week.” She recalled the shared laughter from herself and Selina at the sight of Harley’s exposed rear like the Coppertone sunblock girl.

            “Ha, ha. Funny, funny, Red. Joke’s on _you_ ; that was Lou.”

            “Good heavens, forgive me for mixing up your identical hyenas in such a brazen way.”

            “Ain’t identical. Bud’s got a spot under his eye, like that mole under yours.”

            “It’s a freckle, Harl.”

            “Uh-huh, sure. And the Pacific Ocean is all Sprite.”

            “My, my,” Pam sighed, ecstatic to see their home begin looming into view. “I think it’s time for little Harleen to hit the hay.”

            “Ew,” Harley shivered. “Don’t call me that. If there’s one thing I’m thankful to Puddin’ for, it’s giving me a different name.”

            Pam’s hand tightened over Harley’s. “I think Harleen isn’t so bad, sweetheart.”

            “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t understand. Your name is so _pretty_. I got my name from some great-grandma on my dad’s side.”

            “But that’s a lovely thing, Harl.”

            “Because my dad lost a bet.”

            “Oh.”

            “And my middle name is Frances.”

            “Um,” Pam pursed her lips. “It’s, uh, not so bad.”

            “Harleen Frances Quinzel.” Harley intoned. “Say it altogether. No, wait, don’t. You might end up summoning my great-nana back from the grave.”

            “Fine,” Pam huffed. Harley was practically leaning against her now, her legs moving slower and slower. She was wearing down. Pam helped her up the porch steps and over the threshold of their warmly lit foyer. “I won’t call you Harleen, but I don’t like the sentiment of your nickname. It’s part of the reason why I call you daffodil all the time.”

            “Really?” Harley detached from her, leaving Pam’s side cold. She spun; posing in what Pam was certain Harley thought was a seductive way. Honestly, she looked like a drunken duck. “And here I thought it was ’cause you _liked_ me.”

            Pam, smiling fondly, pushed a lock of hair behind Harley’s ear. Harley took the hand and pressed it to her cheek. “Well, there’s that, too.”

            “And I know you don’t care for Mr. J,” Harley bounded away, shedding her jacket and shoes in a short trail as she went deeper into the building. Pam scooped them up and set them in a neat pile in the hall closet, discarding her own jacket and shoes, too. She would have to pick them up in the morning; right now, she was tired. “But you and him are just gonna have to see eye-to _-eye_ one of these days.”

            Pam made a face. “I don’t see why I should.”

            Harley jolted up from where she’d sprawled on the couch. Pam watched with an arched brow as the clown struggled to pull off her pantyhose beneath her checked skirt. Once her legs were bare, she snatched up a blanket and draped it over herself, panting from the exertion. A small, miraculous feat from someone so plastered.

            “You _should_ ,” Harley spoke into a throw pillow, “because it’s dumb. I know you guys are runnin’ conflicting business—”

            “It’s not conflicting business, hon.”

            “—but he’s my _boyfriend_ —”

            Pam cut Harley off with a derisive snort.

            Harley sat up again. “Wha?”

            “Oh, sorry,” Pam spoke from behind her knuckle. “I thought you said _boyfriend_.”

            Harley turned up her nose. “I did.”

            “Funny,” Pam’s smile was gone. “Last I checked, a _boyfriend_ is pretty much the opposite of your Mr. J, Harl.”

            “Oh, how would _you_ know?” Harley grasped her pillow huffily. “Ya don’t even _like_ guys, Red. Or people, honestly. You just use ’em like Kleenex and let them blow in the wind.”

            “I don’t use you that way.”

            “Ya have no idea how much my Puddin’ _cherishes_ me.”

            “Cherish? _Him?_ ”

            “Whatcha doin’, Red? Red?”

            Pam stomped over to Harley, plopped beside her and forced her to turn around. None too gently, Pam forced the back of Harley’s shirt up and pressed her hand harshly to the bruised and scarred flesh.

            “Red, you’re hurting me!” Harley squealed breathily, trying to slip away from Pam’s firmly pressed palm. “Stop it!”

            “I’m not doing anything but touching the _marks_ that _filthy creature_ left on you, Harley!” It was rare for Ivy to lose her temper like this, when she wasn’t talking about plants, or the state of the planet, or reprimanding Harley for breaking something again. This was different anger, because it was Harley who was breaking. “Each time you come back, it’s a little worse, Harl. Are you trying to tell me that you _like_ lying down and letting him dig his nails so deep in your back that you bleed all over your favorite shirts.”

            Harley was still wincing from the contact. “N-no, it’s not…”

            Pam moved her hand a bit to the side, the pressure still constant. “You like that he bites you so hard he bruises down to the _muscle?_ ”

            “H-he—Red…”

            At last, she moved her hand down, to the largest bruise on Harley’s body as of the moment. “Or that he _punches_ you so hard your kidneys don’t work like they should? You’ve been using the bathroom more than usual, Harl.”

            “It was his foot, Red! Stop it!”

            Pam released her hold only to seize Harley’s shoulders and turn her back around. There were tears in Harley’s eyes, mingling embarrassment and hatred. It would probably be too much, a step too far, but she had to. Losing Harley was one thing, losing Harley to death was another.

            Pam yanked up the front of Harley’s shirt, and gently placed her fingertips to the bruising on her abdomen. She had lied before; _these_ were the worst of the bruises. Harley began to cry harder, unable to look at Pam.

            “Or that he might have single-handedly made it impossible for you to have children?” Pam asked quietly, her other hand absently touching her own stomach. Exposing Harley’s stomach had been a hunch she’d hoped wasn’t true, but there it was. It was a shared burden of theirs. “Every time I think of his disgusting hands on your body, _changing_ it into something awful from something so good, trying to turn _you_ into a monster…Harley, I get physically sick. You think I don’t understand it, Harl, but I do. My tormentor is my own body; yours is the man you think loves you.”

            Pam had expected more tears, maybe even a few slaps to the face. But not this, not _silence_. Harley was looking at her with vacant eyes; devoid of feeling.

            “Puddin’ is just rough sometimes, Ivy.” Her voice was almost robotic. “He loves me more than his words can make real. I know he ain’t…right. He’s got problems. His brain makes things go all fuzzy and he can’t make a good from a bad, or a bad from a good.”

            “Darling,” Pam reached forward and took Harley’s hand in hers. “Sometimes, loving someone doesn’t mean you have to be together. _Loving_ someone can also mean letting them go, for their own good. No one has the right to put their hands on you in that way. A touch should be a touch, not a fist. Look at me, Harl. _Look at me_.”

            Harley’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears.

            “Go. Away.”

            Pam flinched backward, the pain worse than a slap. Pam couldn’t take it anymore; she’d allowed herself to become emotional, and for what? Flat out rejection? Worse than that, the expression on Harley’s face was that of absolute denial, as if she was mentally casting out each of Pam’s words syllable by syllable.

            “Fine,” Pam flung herself upward, allowing what she was feeling to morph into something she could handle. “Go back to him and continue living as you always have, tired and afraid! One of these days, Harley, he’s going to go too far and he’s going to take your _life!_ I’m not going to be around to see it; I’m removing myself before that can happen. Tell Selina she has my thanks for letting me into her home; it was a good run. Don’t worry; you won’t ever see me again.”

            Even with all that anger, Pam couldn’t just end it like this. She could convince herself that Harley was Satan itself, and she would still mourn like a wounded wolf at the loss of her.

            “Just,” Pam hesitated, fumbling for words. “Just _promise me_ , Harl. Promise me, when he does come at you again, for once in your life _fight back_. If you ever cared about me at all, _promise me_.”

            It was in absolute silence that Pam made it to the front door. Hand on the doorknob, the sound of claws dully scuttling against the wooden floors came from behind her. She felt the hyenas’ cold noses before she saw them. Feeling tears begin to form, Pam ducked down and drew them in close. She hadn’t particularly loved the hyenas, but they’d been good to her before.

            “I’m leaving, boys,” Pam told them in the sweetest voice she could muster. On occasion, the hyenas had taken an order or two from her, but how loyal they were to her was yet to be proven. “Your mom doesn’t want me around anymore. Keep her warm. Keep her safe. Don’t…don’t let her cry alone, all right?”

            The hyenas whimpered in response.

            “Good boys,” she ruffled their heads, and disappeared into the night.

***

            Selina arrived home just before dawn. Harley was startled awake by the thud of the closing front door.

            “Red?” Immediately, she regretted saying the name. She didn’t have the right to be the first thing she thought about when she woke after what she did. “How’s it going, Cat?”

            Selina, less drunk than she’d been hours ago, flopped onto Harley’s legs on the sofa, a satisfied look on her face. “Awesome, awesome. Thanks for that little trick you and Ivy pulled with my phone; Bruce explained it. You guys got me a _very_ good night in bed. And I wasn’t alone.”

            Harley smirked. It was rare that Selina and Bruce got together, but for some reason the cat burglar didn’t mind how little time they shared together. “You’ve got a bruise on your wrist! I told him not to take advantage of you!”

            Selina shook her head, a huge smile on her face. “While I appreciate the concern, Harls, no one was taken advantage of. And he apologized. He accidentally locked the cuffs too tight.”

            Harley’s cheeks went red. “Oh. Wait, what’d you say?”

            Selina blinked. Her green eyes were a little less bloodshot. Harley also noticed that she wasn’t wearing her tank top anymore; Bruce must have given her some clean clothes. They smelled like expensive cologne, and Selina had the smile of a woman who was wearing the clothes that smelled of a man’s expensive cologne.

            “I said thank you for the concern, but—”

            Harley held up a hand. “Y’said he apologized? For playin’ rough? I thought you and Bruce and you and B-Man liked all that dirty stuff? You make jokes about your whip all the time.”

            It was Selina’s turn to blush. “Well, yeah…sleeping together like that should always be gentle in some way, either during or at the end. Bruce is more of a _during_ guy. I swear, every five seconds he was saying sorry or asking if I was okay.”

            “But he never, y’know, hurts you?”

            Selina’s brows bunched together. “Harley, this is getting awfully personal. Why so many questions on the way I sleep around?”

            “Let’s say, hypothetically, Bruce or B-Man…kicked ya back while you were doin’ it.”

            “I’d kick him right the fuck back, no one has the right to lay a hand on me like that. I’m not an expert on BDSM, contrary to what Vicki Vale and her snickering posse have to say about it, but I know that you shouldn’t hurt for weeks after, Harl. This is about _him_ , isn’t it?”

            “I’ve never heard you use a tone about him like that before.”

            “Well, maybe I’m still kinda drunk. I never really have to try and talk to you about it, because Ives covers all the bases pretty well. I don’t like Joker. He’s a sick sonuva bitch. It was before your time, but he did something extremely fucked up to Batman that ended up in losing someone he loved. Multiple times, actually, now that I think about it. I have no respect for him whatsoever.”

            “Most people don’t.”

            “I’ve also been in a couple abusive relationships, Harley. Real bad ones, the kind I never thought I’d get out of, before I became Catwoman. Bruce and Batman may play it rough, but they never bite to break the skin, if you get what I mean. And after…Harl, if Joker loved you, trust me, there’d be some kind of sweetness after. Does he even _look_ at you when you’re through?”

            Harley’s silence was damning. Against all the things swirling in her mind, she blurted the thought that hurt most. “I kicked Red out!”

            Selina’s head snapped back in shock. “What the—why?”

            “She was tryin’ to set me straight on Joker, but I wouldn’t listen! So I told her to leave, and she did! I messed up; she probably won’t ever talk to me again!”

            Selina patted Harley’s shoulder. “Calm down. Let’s give her a call. If she doesn’t pick up, then we’ll sleep in until noon and go looking for her.”

            Harley sniffled. “Yeah?”

            Selina nudged her nose with a knuckle. “Of course, kid. Besides, when is Pam ever _not_ pissed? Gimme your phone.”

            Selina dialed, all the while Harley wrung her hands together anxiously. She’d really messed it up this time.

            “Please leave your message for 809-7…”

            “Try it again,” Harley insisted, taking the phone from Selina to do it herself. “C’mon, Red…”

            It stopped ringing.

            “Hello, Red?”

            A loud, piercing scream came from the other line.

            “Red!”

            “Harley girl!”

            Her stomach flopped. “P-Puddin’! How are ya?”

            Selina’s mouth dropped open wide when Harley mouthed for her to get changed. They’d need costumes and gadgets.

            “Harley, so happy you rang! I was just about to whittle your little green friend down to make skewers! Summertime is a-coming, and with it comes barbeques. Maybe I should start smoking the meat _right away_.”

            “Awe, Puddin’,” Harley whined, already upstairs and trying to shimmy into her suit with one hand preoccupied. She put the phone on speaker and zipped up. “Wait just a little bit? I wanna be there when—when ya cook the pig!”

            “Harl, we’re doing wood jokes; you jumped the gun.”

            Another agonized scream, definitely from Pam, came from the speaker. Harley was holding back her tears as best she could. She’d done this.

            “Better hurry, Harl. The boys are getting restless,” his voice darkened. “We’ve been holed up at the hideout at the pier awhile; no women to interact with for days. Ah, but since Pammy likes to play with the big boys so much, seems like she’s always wanted to be one. Perhaps we should remind her of the _joys_ of being a woman, hm?”

            “One step closer and I’ll annihilate the whole building!” Pam shrieked.

            “No one’s gonna touch her yet, Harl, but better hurry all the same. Oh, and be a dear and fetch daddy’s favorite cigars on your way home. You’re the best doll, mwah.”

            Harley found Selina already in Pam’s car. Together, they sped off to the pier, Harley’s whole body numb with cold.

            The sun had still yet to rise, but the pier was beginning to fill with the dull glow of early morning. The briny smell of the sea and fish did nothing good for the sick feeling in Harley’s stomach.

            “If they touch her, I’m going to scratch out his eyes and feed them to him,” Selina muttered, extending the claws in her gloves.

            “Wait, Cat,” Harley held up a hand. “You should stay back. If they think we’re here for a rescue, things might go south real quick. I need you to stay behind just in case. If I’m not out in fifteen, call for Bat Backup.”

            “I’m _not letting you_ go in alone.”

            “It’s the only way, please!”

            Selina was unhappy to relent. Harley wrapped her in a tight hug. “I’ve always looked up to you, Selina. I hope things work out for you and Wayne or Batman one of these days. And, um, thank you for being my friend.”

            Selina clapped her back. “Why are you talking like I’m never going to see you again?”

            Harley smiled sadly. She didn’t have the heart to tell Catwoman that with what she had planned, there was no way Joker would ever let her see the light of day again.

            The hideout was absurdly easy to get into. The part that made it a good location was that the area around the pier was abandoned for miles and had been for a century. If Gotham bothered to repurpose its space, it would see fewer villains.

            Inside, Joker sat on a stack of crates like it was a throne. No henchmen were visible, but Harley knew they were inside the old fishery. Most importantly, on Joker’s lap, with her arms and legs tied and an apple wedged in her mouth, was Pam.

            She began grunting as soon as she saw Harley. Pam was still dressed in the outfit she wore last night, but it was torn in places where she’d evidently been beaten. A large, bleeding gash was exposed on the hip where their hands had shared space in her pocket just hours ago.

            _Oh, Red. What have I done?_

***

            “I went looking for you, Harley,” Joker pouted, looking awfully bored, as if he didn’t have a bound and gagged Poison Ivy on his knee like a doll. “I thought you’d be at this vine bitch’s greenhouse, but surprise-surprise when she told me to get the fuck out. She said that I’d _won_. Well, I told her no one’s won anything, if she was still alive. You can’t have the affections of two people, Harl. It’s not very nice.”

            Harley, hands clenched tight. She ceased looking at Pam. “Let her go, Puddin’. She don’t mean nothin’ to me, y’know it.”

            Pam made a new pained sound, this time it wasn’t from pain. Again, Harley rejected her outright, and with such scorn. She was too tired and too beaten to hide her pain anymore. If the apple weren’t in her mouth, she knew that every secret feeling, each unshared passion for the blonde little jester would tumble out of her mouth. They were the sentiments of a dying woman; she was bleeding a lot, she didn’t have much time.

            “Do the honors then, Harl.” Joker produced a long dagger that he flipped in the air and caught by the sharp point. “Carve up the ham so we can have ourselves luau. Then maybe old Mr. J will take you back.”

            “Take me back,” Harley took the knife, “Mr. J?”

            “That’s right,” he smiled, taking Harley’s chin in his fingers, affectionately smearing Pam’s blood on her face. “You and me, Harley girl. Like old times. Things were so much better before old Pamela here interfered, weren’t they?”

            “Better,” Harley smiled brightly. “That’s for sure! Like when you spent all that time convincing me you loved me in Arkham, when I was still a doctor?”

            Joker laughed. “A knee-slapper! To think you’d ever fall for someone as _beaten_ as your old Mr. J!”

            “And when you ratted me out to B-Man, when you wanted to lighten your sentence? That sure was funny, too, right, Puddin’?”

            Joker’s laughter tightened. “Ha…right! Sure was a laugh…”

            Harley’s face turned into a mask of hatred. “Or when ya threw me outta window? Or when you took that video of us having sex and shared it with all the guys in Arkham, but replaced everything I said with animal sounds? Or when you told me you wanted a hug and put me in a _chokehold_ until I passed out for a day? Or when ya every now and again decided I just didn’t need to eat. Or—”

            “Harley, baby! Those were just lover’s spats! Cute little fights!”

            “When Red and I fight, she gets a little loud, but apologizes to me later, Mr. J.”

            Joker’s face morphed into boredom. “Oh, please. You aren’t gonna start spouting a story on _twu wuv_ , are ya, Harl? You and I, we never played by anyone’s rulebooks. It’s why we worked so well.”

            “Wrong!” Harley now held the knife level with Joker’s nose. “I _tried_ to play by the rules, clown! I tried every day to make your love seem natural! I’ve got the scars to prove it!”

            Harley swung the knife down, plunging it into Joker’s shoulder. He howled in pain, releasing his hold on Pam to staunch the flow coming from the wound. Harley dragged Pam off his knee, cutting the ropes around her wrists with the bloodied knife. Pam rolled away from the crate throne just as Joker rose to full height before Harley, shaking with rage.

            Pam spat out the rotten apple and fumbled with the ropes at her ankles. The intricate knot was too tight and complicated for merely untying. Her hands started to bleed at the nails as she scraped at her restraints; she had to help Harley, but her vision was fading. Blood was trickling from her in what seemed every few inches of her body. She was a goner.

            But she had to fight.

            Harley would never defend herself against the Joker, and she’d be _damned_ if she was going to lie there and watch her be beaten to death after her stunt.

            “You miserable brat!” Joker snarled, reaching for Harley’s head.

            But Harley ducked. He reached again, and she repeated. Pam blinked. They continued the back and forth for a moment. Joker couldn’t lay a hand on her now; why was Harley always so beaten when the man couldn’t catch her with his good arm?

            _For once in your life, fight back_ , her own words came to her in a flash, and she sat back, disbelieving what she saw.

            “You’ve been real mean, Mr. J!” Harley ducked low and kicked Joker square in the gut. He fell to the floor, but Harley kept kicking. “You’ve hurt me so bad that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to hurt more! You’ve been playing games ever since I showed up at Arkham and I haven’t been the same person since! I hate that you hurt me! I hate that you hurt everyone, and that I’m _part_ of that everyone! But, mostly, I hate that you made me love you and that I’ll never be able to stop myself!”

            Joker had stopped moving. He wasn’t dead, but Harley wasn’t finished. She took the knife, and drove it through his dominant hand once, twice, three times. When they revived them in the hospital later, Pam doubted he would ever be able to use that hand again.

            _That’s my girl_ , Pam thought, and blacked out.

***

            She awoke in the hospital days later. IVs were in her arms, filled with purified water and Miracle Gro. She’d have laughed if it weren’t for the fact her throat was so dry. She felt better, though. Still sore, but something clued her in to the fact that her injuries were no longer fresh and bleeding. She would probably be all right for discharge, come a few days’ time.

            Most importantly, at her bedside was Harley. The blonde was wearing an old T-shirt and jeans, and sobbing into the hem of the shirt. Her eyes were swollen and red, and her hair was frayed and mussed in her pigtails. There was an air about her that told Pam she hadn’t slept in at least a day.

            She looked awful, but in the pallid light and stifling quiet of the hospital, Pamela thought her the most beautiful thing ever put into existence.

            “Why?”

            Harley’s head shot up, a wide smile on her face. “Red! Oh, Red, I’m so happy you’re okay!”

            “Sit…me up,” Pam tried on her own, but it was still beyond her. A few of her ribs may have been bruised, or cracked. Harley gently eased Pam up in the bed. “What happened?”

            “You got beat up real bad, now they’re fixing you up. The Miracle Gro was my idea; the doctors said it’s been workin’!”

            “That’s my girl,” Pam smiled weakly. “What happened to Joker?”

            Harley went red in the face. “He’s still alive, if that’s whatcha mean.”

            It was only partially what she meant.

            “He’s gonna lose that hand, though. Sick guy’s never gonna touch me again.”

            Pam bit back her immediate reply, a creed of how she would never let Joker touch her. But he had gotten Pam, and damn near killed her, and threatened worse. Joker, while not a super, was capable of terrible things.

            “Why did you…?”

            If possible, Harley turned scarlet. She looked at Pam, confusion and dawning blooming across her face. “I remembered what you said, about fighting back. It came down to who I wanted to hurt more. I’d never wanted to hurt P—Joker before, not even when he…when he hit me. But when I saw what he did to _you_ …”

            “You…” Pam swallowed hard against the dry feeling in her throat. “You chose _me_ …over _him?_ ”

            Harley looked down again, at her clenched hands, and nodded. “And I think I’d do it again, too. Over and over.”

            “Why now? Why the sudden change?”

            “Easy, Red.” Harley reached over and helped her sip from a glass of water on the bedside table. The lipstick on the rim told her it was Harley’s own glass; that detail felt so important, but she didn’t care as she drank it all greedily down. Harley placed the cup back and traced Pam’s cheek with the back of her palm. “Because you cry for me. You’re doing it right now. You’ve never been good at tellin’ what you’re feeling, have ya, Red? It’s good you have me around, ’cause I can read ya like a book.”

            Pam, suddenly aware of her tears, somehow felt braver for them. As if some wall had been removed between her and Harley. “Sometimes, I wonder, Harl…”

            “Wonder what?”

            “What would have happened, if you had chosen me first?” She thought back to that day, when Harley first received a tour of Arkham. “You’d walked past, stared me right in the eyes as you spoke to a colleague on why you had chosen to work there. I didn’t think much of you then, honestly. Just a pretty girl ready to be fed to the house and eaten alive by its occupants. In retrospect, I wish I could have done something differently. Approached the edge of my cell. Called out to you. Been just a few cells down, past Joker. I had no idea what I was missing.”

            “If it makes ya feel any better,” Harley moved her chair so she could rest her head on Pam’s shoulder, “I wish I had chosen you. It hasn’t been my choice in a long, long time. I’m starting to see that I _can_ make choices. It’s what people in the field call a breakthrough, y’know. The important thing is I’m choosing now, and…”

            “And?” Pam’s heartrate began to speed up, just a tad. The heart monitor’s beeping told her what her pulse was telling her.

            “And I think I’m heading down a path that leads to choosing you,” Harley’s eyes were full of tears, her face a mask of anguish. “Is it okay? Is it okay, that I want to stay with you? Do you want me?”

            “I’ll always want you, Harley.”

            “Because I’m still gonna want him,” Harley confessed, clutching her chest as she cried. Pam was immobilized by the sight. “It’s so messed up, but I’m always gonna wanna be with him, even though I know I should hate him, even though I _do_ hate him!”

            Ivy let Harley cry for just a moment, holding onto her hand as if it was sustaining her more than any of the IVs could ever do. This was the pivotal moment. Whatever was said in this room would define the dynamic between her and Harley for the rest of their lives.

            “The important thing, daffodil, is that you have the right to choose. Whatever happens, no matter what you do…I could never hate you. Believe me, I’ve tried. Each time you went back to him, I felt like I had my roots yanked out from beneath me, but still I couldn’t hate you. If you’re worried about hurting me, then…don’t. I just want you to be happy.”

            “When I look at him, my brain goes all fuzzy.” Harley sniffled. “It’s like I’ve forgotten how to think. Things get all jumbled up and suddenly I’m right as rain. I can do anything. I can jump from a building and not get hurt. I can point a gun at my head and pull the trigger and make it out alive.”

            Pam winced. “He makes you feel invincible.”

            “No, he makes me happy to _die_.” Harley said it with a tone of dawning, as though just discovering it herself. “When I’m with you, though, Red, I don’t feel so lost. I don’t feel so high. I get my moments, when I want to climb heights that are too big for me, or take on guys in bars that I shouldn’t even bother with. But you keep me grounded. You show me what’s right, and what isn’t. And you’re patient with me. You’re gentle, and kind.”

            She took Pam’s face so that they were staring into each other. Ivy couldn’t look Harley in the eyes, so she closed hers, instead focusing on their foreheads and noses touching, and Harley’s minty breath on her face.

            “You make me wanna _live_ , Red. I wanna live. I wanna _live!_ I wanna live and keep on living, and I wanna keep on living with you! I wanna stay with you for always, if you’ll have me.”

            “If I’ll have you?” Pam was surprised at her own incredulity in her voice; she had been entirely convinced by Harley’s speech, but her doubt at the end was confusing.

            “I’m always gonna be trouble, Pam. Even though you make me feel good, the old, sane Harley is gone for good. P—Joker’s diabolical plan succeeded; I’m his ultimate punchline. I’m gonna do things you ain’t gonna like. I’m gonna do crazy flips and break things, and tell bad jokes, and talk too much, and mess up plans—”

            “You’re also going to still sing in the shower every morning, make breakfast for us even though it isn’t your turn, read the newspaper quietly to me in bed when I have a migraine and can’t read it myself, brush out my tangles after I shower, console me when my flowers die off in the autumn months, put too much fabric softener in with the laundry because you like the smell, specifically shop for clothes that match your costume, entirely—”

            “Whoa, whoa,” Harley cut Pam off. “Red, are you sayin’…those are things you _like_ about me?”

            Pam went silent, feeling a blush creep into her cheeks. Her heartrate began going up again, according to the monitors.

            “Red?”

            No response.

            “Pam?”

            Harley made that sound she did when she grinned mischievously (a little “hmph” that also belonged in that list Pam had rattled off), and leaned in so her lips brushed Pam’s ear.

            “Pamela?” She whispered.

            “They’re things I…that I… _love_ about you.”

            “Oh,” Harley nodded. “ _Oh!_ You…you mean, you…?”

             “I…yeah,” Pam nodded. “Yeah.”

            Harley beamed. It had been so long since Pam saw her smile that way, in the way that made the sun pale like the moon. “I ‘yeah’ you, too. Pam.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Yeah.”

            And then they kissed.

            And the heartrate monitor started to go berserk.

            A doctor and what seemed a dozen nurses charged in, only to find that Harley had left her seat and was now planted on Pam’s lap, the two of them very clearly separating from a heated lip-lock. Pam would never forget the smug smile on Harley’s face as she watched the doctors remove the connection to the heartrate monitor, checking her vitals, and warnings of calling the GCPD.

            “I guess I’m a danger to ya health, Red.” Harley chuckled, seating herself gently in Pam’s lap, mindful of the bruising there. “The Bat said he’s gonna work with the police on the situation. We won’t see a trial, not for _this,_ anyway. If I kiss ya again, are y’gonna have a coronary?”

            Pam rolled her eyes. “No, Harl.”

            She frowned, her pigtails appeared to droop. “No, I can’t kiss ya?”

            “No, I won’t die if you kiss me again.” Pam thought she’d turned the same shade as her hair. Honestly, she might die if she didn’t. “You can kiss me as many times as you want.”

            Harley perked up. “As many times as I want, whenever I want?”

            “Within reason,” Pam cautioned. “So long as you want to.”

            Harley leaned in again, carefully turning her head, pausing just before Pam’s lips. “Y’know, we never really kissed much. Me and him. I guess that shoulda been some kinda red flag, or something. I don’t know if I’m any good…”

            “Well, I’ve never kissed someone and left them conscious enough to rate me after,” Pam said dryly. “I guess we’ll have to find out. Together.”

            “Together,” Harley pressed their foreheads close again. “Y’know, Red, this really is like living inside a dream. You’ll really let me stay with you, for a long time?”

            “As long as you want.”

            “Then…forever?”

            “Yeah,” Ivy swore. “Forever.”


	2. Elle Etaite Si Jolie

I’ve never done a sequel before, but here goes. I’m using that ambiguous timeline again, where Bruce is still alive but the Sirens are still a team. Make of it what you will. Fuck continuity. Also lalala, I know nothing about prisons or mental institutions, lalala.

* * *

 

            If there were one fact Pam would insist on until the day she died, it would be that Harley hadn’t started out the way she would be remembered. Before Harley Quinn, there was Harleen Quinzel: Trained, licensed psychiatrist. Even if she sometimes forgot the detail herself, she made a point to force herself to remember, because sometimes even Harley forgot.

            The cold stone floor scraped at her skin, opening old wounds and scratching open new ones. When had she last heard the voices of her children? Their soft green sighs were muted by the coarse concrete that separated them. She focused on a sound she could shape in her head, a sound golden and brash, as if sunlight had a voice.

            _Wake up, Red. The sun’s been up for hours, didja miss it?_

            She was missing something. Everything. Her brain, her body, was on full disconnect. Her hands clenched uselessly against the battered metal of her manacles, shackles that bound her to the wall. The door was so near. Each day, she would wake presumably with the sun, it was too hard to tell with no windows in the dark room, and walk to the extent of her chains. Even when she lay on the floor, arms stretched out in desperation, nails clawing at the concrete, desperate for even another inch, her reaching fell just short. The door was _right there_.

            Plants, they sent out a smell when they died. Grass especially. When cut, that vibrant smell was a sign of brutalization and decay.

            Ivy’s cell was filled with that bright rot.

            The door swung open, and light spilled in, blinding Pam just seconds after seeing the silhouette in the doorframe. Unkind arms hoisted her up, carrying her back to the cot, and a single hand pried her mouth open. The other arm ended in a stump. Through the spots in her vision, she spied the cold eyes of the one who fed her. They were unrepentant.

            “Agh!” Her jailer cried out. “Naughty, naughty. Never bite the hand that feeds you, Pammy. Be like the better part of a rosebush; all petals, no thorns?”

            Again, her mouth was open, and against the flush of blood in her mouth salt poured in. She wished her tongue could desensitize itself from the taste.

            “Be good next time, Pammy, and you’ll get a drink.”

            If she had anything in her to cry with, she would. Instead, her body wracked as if she were producing tears, listening as her captor poured out a bottle of water onto the floor. She missed her chance. How many days had she gone without water?

            “Oh,” he chuckled, stooping to light a new candle in the far corner of her cell. It was a small stump of wax that would only last a short while, before its wax joined the cooled puddle on the floor. “A moth. Looks like you finally have a friend, Pammy.”

            The door shutting behind him hurt like a slap to the gut. Her stomach undulated as her body continued to go through the motions of crying without tears. The moth, a fuzzy white little thing the size of a strawberry, perched on the back of her hand. She raised it in the candlelight, grateful for a touch that didn’t hurt. But, as soon as it came, it left, seeking out brighter things. It didn’t hesitate as it flew into the flickering flame of the candle. Pam watched with resigned horror as it fluttered uselessly around, its shadow bouncing haphazardly along the walls as it burned.

            It had sought out something too good, too bright, and was punished for it. In the moment before its impact with the fire, it must have thought it the sun, a chance at freedom. And as it died, burning out, Pam formed one coherent thought.

            _Harley_ , the ashes of the moth lay smoldering on the concrete, _I’m dying_.

* * *

 

            According to Two-Face, Ivy had not been admitted to Arkham this time around.

            “Ain’t possible!” Harley squeaked, but clamped her hands over her mouth. The cafeteria guards were trigger-happy, and the last thing she needed was to be tazed for trying to get some information. “We were caught at the same time. B-Man caught us looting some snooty party. Of _course_ she’d end up here.”

            “Look,” Harvey buttered one half of his English muffin, and then paired it with a smear of raspberry preserves on the other half. There was artistry to his illness, honestly. The guy was some sort of obsessive compulsive savant. “I’m just tellin’ it like it is. You were brought in like you always were—screaming and biting and threatening to piss on the guards—”

            “ _Nuh-uh_ , I was tellin’ them I _had_ to pee or else. I really had to go.”

            “Whatever, Little Miss Tinkle. You were brought in, and so was Ivy.”

            “Ya just said she wasn’t admitted!” Harley covered her mouth again, watching as a few of the officers edged cautiously toward their table, hands brushing their batons and Tasers.

            “And she wasn’t,” Harvey said around a bite of toast. He frowned with the good half of his mouth at Harley’s mostly empty tray and handed her the unopened banana on his plate. She took it and ate it absentmindedly, not fully comprehending how hungry she was until she had food in her mouth. He offered her his carton of orange juice and she accepted. “Petal was taken down for detox, like she always is, and hasn’t been seen since. Clearly, she was released; otherwise you two would be cell-by-cell, right?”

            Harley chewed thoughtfully. “But it makes no sense. There’s no way she’d leave m—I mean, she was just all _injured_ and stuff a coupla months ago…”

            “She’s a tough gal,” Two-Face grumbled.

            Like Pam, he was older than Harley. Then again, most people at least felt older than she was. She didn’t particularly care for him, but while he’d been bad to Red in the past, he’d also been good to her, too. He was like the rest of them, just a regular person once. He was lucky, because it was an even-split on which half was good and which half was troubled. Harley didn’t like to use the word “bad” for any of her and the inmates. Troubled. That’s what they were.

            “Y’know, they caught _him_ again, right?” Harvey noted, plopping the banana peel onto his tray with the rest of his trash. “Not long after you guys were caught. Folks like Wesker and Nigma are saying he came in shouting your name. Freaks like Croc and Zsasz Are saying he’s down there, in those nasty old cells, groaning your name like some wounded freak. Y’know you’re fucked up if you give Zsasz the willies—not you _him_.”

            “You say _him_ like Ivy does, when she talks about Joker.” Even saying the name stung, like saltwater in a fresh scrape. Ivy said that pain meant she’s healing, but it’s the kind of healing that’s always going to happen, and always going to hurt.

            “She means a lot to you,” Harvey muttered, and Harley had a gut feeling, just a hunch, that it was his good half speaking. “Petal. Doesn’t she?”

            “You still care about her,” Harley countered quietly, “right? Of course I care. She does that. She makes you care.”

            Harvey laughed.

            “Wha? Wha?”

            “It’s funny,” he chuckled, wiping his hands with a paper napkin. “I’ve sat at this same table, this same chair, and had this same conversation. Petal’s said those same words. _She makes you care_.”

            “About who?”

            The good side of his face tugged upward in a bright grin, and a new camaraderie Harley had never considered formed between them.

            “You.”

* * *

 

            It took a solid three minutes for Selina to stop laughing from the other side of the glass. The woman had _tears_ in her eyes from laughter, fueled by seeing her friend in lockup again.

            “Ya finished, cat?” Harley grumbled, arms folded tighter than her pigtails were tied.

            “ _Harley_ ,” Selina moaned, wiping at her eye. “You can’t tell a girl a story like that and not expect this kind of response. What were you and Ivy thinking? You robbed a Wayne affair, after all. Bruce is the best protected man in Gotham. And half of the GCPD was on the invite list!”

            Harley kept her gaze down, hoping to hide her red cheeks. Jokes weren’t so funny when they were aimed at you, after all. It was important to laugh at yourself, but not when others were making the shots. “Was Ives’ idea. Mr. Wayne bought up a lot of some exotic plant and it really steamed her broccoli.”

            “He was funding use of that plant to culture immunizations for tropical diseases, kid. It was a sloppy job, especially for Ivy. You two have really lost your edge since you…”

            “Since we what?” Harley looked her full in the face, challenge in her eyes.

            “Well,” Selina leaned in, tone quiet. “Started _dating_.”

            “Ain’t dating,” this time, the red in Harley’s cheeks was of a different nature, and her lips spread thin, frozen unattractively somewhere between a smile and a frown.

            “You beat up your psychotic ex-boyfriend, made him lose his _hand_ , and played a hot game of tonsil hockey with Ivy in front of a roomful of doctors and nurses. I think that qualifies as dating.”

            “Ain’t like that,” Harley muttered, leaning back in her chair so she could see out the window at the far side of the visitor’s room. The sun was shining outside; maybe Ivy was out enjoying it. “We’re just together now. Y’know? It’s like you and B-Man.”

            “Which B-Man?”

            “Okay, you and your B-Men. A mutual understanding.”

            Selina cocked her head, her earring catching the light. She was always so sparkly, when she dressed up. Harley envied her ability to make something so degrading as slumming it to meet her friend in prison something like a formal affair with just a dress and good shoes. When Harley dressed up, she felt like a kid playing pretend.

            She didn’t feel so much like a kid around Ivy. When she was with Joker, he demanded she at least wore her face paint at all times. When she was with Ivy, Ivy let her wear whatever she wanted. And she’d tested that rule to its fullest. She wore silly things like pajamas out in public, or jeans to bed. She would borrow Ivy’s clothes, her perfume, her makeup, and once even her nightie. All of Ivy’s belongings were that of a grown woman, and Harley longed for that, perhaps even hated her for it. If Pam minded, she never said anything. There was just the occasional sigh, or a comment to put it back where it belonged when she was through.

            “Mutual understanding?” Selina echoed.

            “Y’know, you’re just _together_ , but you don’t make a deal of it. You kiss and hold hands and do _more_ , but never broadcast it. I think that’s how it should be.”

            “That’s odd,” the cat burglar smiled lopsidedly. “But encouraging, coming from the girl who shouted about the great ‘love’ that was Joker and Harley Quinn at every possible breath.”

            “Times _change_ , y’know.” Harley huffed, stiffening her bottom lip. She peeked at Selina through a squinted eye, and spied a fond smile on her face. Harley drooped. “’Sides, you can’t call it dating when your girl gets released and doesn’t bother to spring ya.”

            Selina’s head slid back, her brows furrowed. “Released?”

            “Yeah,” Harley lamented. “Guess I should be used to it; Puddin’—I mean, _Joker_ , he did it all the time. Got free and let me free myself. Didn’t think Ivy was like that, but I s’pose I should be used to a little cold shoulder by now.”

            “That doesn’t sound like Ivy,” Selina muttered. “Sure, she’s left people in the dust in the past, but I’ve seen her tear the earth in two just to get you out of tough spots. As far as the Jolly Green Giant’s concerned, you’re pretty much part of her gardens by now.”

            “Great, back to square one. Being owned and toyed around like some doll on strings. Great progress, Dr. Quinzel. Way to go. Thanks a ton, Ivy.”

            “No, no. Think about it like this: Ivy hasn’t let a damn person in since that doctor guy, right?”

            “Woodrue.”

            “I guess. You guys won’t give me the full deets, but I respect that.” Selina tapped on the glass with red painted nails. “It’s just been Ives and her plants for a long, long time, right? So, then, the fact that she’s even taken you in in the first place is a huge deal, am I right? Or am I rambling? I think I’m rambling. The point is, I don’t want you and Ivy to split up; I’ve wanted you two to be happy since you sprung out together that first time. Don’t ruin this for me.”

            “For you?”

            “Oh, okay. Don’t ruin it for you guys. I just want you to be happy.”

            “Y’think Ivy makes me happy?”

            Selina narrowed her green eyes. “Why do you keep calling her Ivy?”

            Harley stood, turning her back on her friend. Outside, the sun was shining. A couple of butterflies danced in a helix past the window. Somewhere, Ivy was out there enjoying it all, while she was locked up inside. It would be so easy to escape, but what was the point? She was alone. She felt like dying.

            “Because she left me behind.”

* * *

 

            Wayne Manor was always so cold this time of year. Bruce, never once having to fear not meeting the electric bill, spared no expense at keeping his home a frosty temperature all summer long. When Selina visited, she had to dress as if she was getting ready to head out into the fall, and frankly that was unsexy. However, the first time she’d spent the night and worn a skimpy little sleep ensemble she caught a cold and was caught walking around essentially half-dressed by one of Bruce’s dozens of miniature underlings.

            Selina rolled out of the empty bed and pulled on Bruce’s robe. Everything he owned smelled expensive. Even the Batsuit reeked of his four-hundred dollar cologne. If anyone asked her what privilege was, she would gesture to Bruce without hesitation.

            The kitchen was empty with the exception of one small occupant, who locked eyes on her with scorn.

            “Father, your _floozy_ is awake!”

            Selina, brows furrowed, smiled as she cinched the robe shut. “You’re awfully cute, kid, for being named after the spawn of the _Devil_ and all.”

            Damian Wayne scrunched up his already squashy face. “High talk, for a common strumpet that waltzes in and out of my father’s bed at a moment’s whim.”

            “Wouldn’t call it _waltzing_ , little man. It’s more of a tango, or salsa dancing. What we do isn’t reserved enough to be a waltz.”

            “ _Pennyworth!_ ” Damian sprung from his seat, shouting into the cavernous house as he exited the kitchen. “Fetch the bleach so father’s favorite whore can cleanse her soul!”

            Selina, unused to this sort of banter outside of her two _dearest_ friends, made a face at the boy’s back and stuck out her tongue.

            “I see your time together with Quinn has been rubbing off on you.”

            Selina jumped, nearly knocking over a jar of sugar on the countertop. She righted it, her breathing coming in quick bursts at the sudden start. She looked up at him through her fringe of black hair, a smile beginning to build on her face.

            “I know you’ve been trained by ninja voodoo monks out in the middle of the arctic, darling, but didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s not polite to sneak up on a lady?”

            Bruce, the insufferable man, cocked a brow and smirked. It was always nice to see him in full sunlight for a change. Even if it brought out every scar, every bruise, every wrinkle and laughter line, defining him like an impassive statue worn by time. It was worth it, to see those blue eyes sparkle outside the shine of a streetlamp or traffic light. Selina Kyle was not some gooey hopeless romantic, like Harley, but even she could savor the occasional melting moment.

            She took his hand and pressed it to her cheek, a familiar gesture he once told her was like a cat forcing its owner’s hand to scratch it behind the ear. She’d bitten him then; she had no master.

            “If I said I wanted to shower, would you join me?” Selina traced her thumb back and forth against the back of his hand.

            “Probably not; I have work to do. I _do_ have a day job, you know.”

            “Hmph. Your loss. And what is the enigmatic, charming, debonair Bruce Wayne up to today?”

            “It’s amazing, your ability to both compliment and insult a person in the very same sentence.”

            “It’s a talent. Also, it comes with the territory when one lies awake listening to you snore through the night.”

            “Touché. Something to drink?”

            “Please.”

            He moved to the fridge and retrieved a carton of milk. The Waynes only drank skim, something Selina was still trying to train herself to not hold it against them. She accepted the glass, wondering if her shower could wait until he was free; he wore a turtleneck well.

            “I can’t believe your friends thought holding up an event in my own home was a sound idea,” he smirked into his milk. Even Bruce Wayne could garner a milk mustache, and it humanized him in all the right ways. “Granted, they don’t know about the cave full of tech I keep a few hundred yards beneath the ground floor of this place, but I’m still Bruce Wayne. And the GCPD—”

            “The GCPD were there!” Selina finished for him, gesturing with an exasperated hand. “It’s like I told Harley. She and Ivy have been slipping.”

            “Not that I’m invested,” which was clear Bruce Code for being invested, “but how is Pamela healing up? Her genetic makeup is astoundingly good at recuperating, but Joker brutalized her. I saw her medical reports upon dismissal from the hospital. Even with her accelerated metabolism, she’d be limping at the least. Lacerations, broken bones, nearly complete exsanguination; those aren’t symptoms you just rise up and walk away from.”

            “You do if you love someone,” Selina ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “You were there, in the aftermath. You know what happened. What Harley did. Those two are in deep, through the thick of it all. The way I see it, if Harley could turn her back on the man who’s been her obsession for nearly a decade, for the sake of Pam’s life, of course Pam can push her pain aside to ease Harley’s guilt.”

            “Quinn feels guilty?”

            “She’d be insane not to,” her eyes widened. “Oh, you know what I mean. I don’t think Harley is ever going to get over what happened at those docks. Either she’s regretting what she did to Joker, or she’s regretting letting Ivy get mixed up to begin with. I think her world was simpler before; you know how uncomplicated she likes things to be. Stress makes her a wreck. Same with loneliness. The poor thing’s never been in Arkham without Ivy a cell over before.”

            Bruce’s brows arched upward. “Where is she?”

            “You tell me. Harley says Dent told her Ivy wasn’t admitted.”

            Bruce got quiet. Selina edged closer, watching his stoic expression. He didn’t notice her approach until she waved a hand in front of his face.

            “Earth to Bruce. You know, if you want me to hang around more, you’re gonna have to clue me into those _deep_ , _mysterious_ thoughts of yours.”

            “Go down with me.”

            “A strange way to phrase it, but s—”

            “To the cave, Selina. I need your help.”

            This time, it was Selina’s turn for her brows to move upward. “That’s a first. What’s got the almighty Batman’s undies in a bunch?”

            “Dent is wrong. Ivy was admitted, just like Harley.”

            “Then…that means that…”

            “Exactly,” Bruce stated grimly, “Pamela Isley is missing.”

* * *

 

            Singing, low and mournful, filled Ivy’s cell. Or, rather, the reverberation of a song. The sound of it, faint though it was, echoed and warped throughout the room. Desperate for contact with someone outside of this cell, aside from her captor, Ivy flung herself to the floor, seeking out the sound.

            Beneath the cooled wax of the worn down candles, the sound hummed its loudest. With shaking fingers, Pam picked away the wax, filling her nostrils with the smell of childhood birthday cake and a remembered chorus of “Happy Birthday to You.” She wondered if she would ever celebrate another birthday again.

            A vent, shoddily crafted into the concrete of the cell, was the source of the sound. Ivy pressed her ear to the opening she’d created. The sound of trickling water joined the crooning voice, deep and not exactly pleasant. The sound was almost haunting.

            “ _Elle était si jolie que…ne peux l’oublier. Elle était…quand le vent l’emmenait. Elle fuyait…me disait_ —”

            “Croc.”

            There was only one inmate Ivy knew of that spoke fluent French and was locked up in the deepest bowels of Arkham. Killer Croc paused his song, as if he had heard her interruption, but resumed his singing. After all, who would be insane enough to visit him _down there?_ The sound stopped fading in and out as he found a place to sit. She could hear the water slosh around him as he plopped down.

            “ _Elle est bien trop jolie, et toi, je te connais. L'aimer toute une vie, tu ne pourras jamais_.”

            “Croc!”

            He halted. Even the sloshing in the water ceased. He’d heard. “Who there?”

            The longer Pam lay pressed to the floor, face close to the vent, the more the cuff around her wrist cut into her skin. A fishy, murky smell drifted upward from Croc’s layer. She nearly vomited, but had nothing in her system to release.

            “I know I heard a voice in here,” his deep grumbly voice was well articulated, despite a thick Cajun accent and an apparent lack of lips.

            “It’s Ivy, Croc.” Not that she expected that to endear him in anyway. Whenever they’d crossed paths in the past, she had not been kind to him. It was easy to poke fun, especially when she had Harley’s jokes to lob back at him. “Where are you?”

            His laughter was like a roll of thunder. “Should be askin’ you that, chere. You sound far away.”

            “I am. And so do you.”

            “Well now,” she heard more splashing, followed by another plop. His voice was louder, as if he was seeking out her voice. Even if he wanted to attack her, he’d never be able to. His sense of smell would tell him how far up she was soon enough. “Never heard of them locking up a lady so deep down before. What’d’ya do? Scratch out a guard’s eyes? Always liked your spunk, when it wasn’t about me.”

            “I don’t know,” Ivy answered. “I woke up here. I don’t think I’ll be around much longer.”

            “Planning to escape?”

            A small, hysterical laugh escaped Pam’s lips. “No. I think I’m just going to rot here.”

            “Can’t have that. Your pigtailed gal pal’d have a fit. Don’t get much gossip down my way, but I hear she thinks you ditched her.”

            A new sort of panic tore through Pam. “I was kidnapped! I’m being held prisoner!”

            “Ain’t we all?”

            How long had she been locked up? How many days had Harley gone thinking Ivy had turned her back on her? Even at her worst, her lowest points, she had never turned her back on Harley. Now she was dying, and she was going to die letting Harley believe she was alone.

            “I heard what you did to old Joke Man,” Croc’s laughter was like the rattling of old bones. Or perhaps he’d found something, or someone, to snack on down there in the abyss. “Can’t say I ain’t jealous. I’m the crocodile, here. I should’ve taken the old guy’s hand and made a pirate out of him.”

            Cold dashed through Pam like a sudden rush of winter. “Joker lost his hand?”

            “Your girl severed every bit she could when she fought back. The whole joint’s proud of her.”

            She thought of the stump of her jailor, and suddenly everything made sense. She would have realized it before, if she hadn’t been so weak and weary, between dehydration and endless handfuls of salt, she may have noticed. And they said Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

            “Can you sing again, Waylon?” Ivy rested her heavy head against the cold concrete. “In English? Please?”

            “Ain’t a happy song, chere. You sure?”

            “Please.”

            He drew in a breath, and as he sang, Ivy felt her heart beat just a bit slower.

            “ _She was so pretty, that I didn’t dare to love her. She was so pretty, I can’t forget her. She was too pretty when the wind took her. She escaped full of delight and the wind told me: She’s very pretty, and I know you. You couldn’t love her all your life_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To Be Continued...


	3. Always Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley and Harvey, the dynamic duo, go to see a very bad man.

   “I wanna see him.”

            Two-Face nearly dropped the can of soda pop in his hand. To be fair, Harley had to admit it was quite a shock. He had been sitting by himself in the cafeteria, muttering and fondling that coin of his, when she sprung up from behind him. He wiped up the small spill with a napkin, glaring at her with his good eye as she pulled up a chair and sat leaning forward against the back, facing him.

            “Who do you wanna see, and why should I care?”

            “ _Harsh_ , Split-Head. And here I thought you’s and I were gettin’ to be friends.” She rocked the chair back and forth. “Y’know exactly who I mean. The guy who was my gross old obsession all these years.”

            “Lionel Richie, huh? If you want a concert, I hear Karlo is taking requests for impressions down in his cell block.”

            “Har, har. You’re so _funny_ , Harv. Y’know who I mean.”

            It wasn’t possible, but Harley could almost swear that both halves of Two-Face were glaring at her now.

           “Listen here, you little brat. I know Petal ain’t here, but if she _were_ , she’d tell ya that that would be the dumbest mistake you could ever make.” He pointed a fork at her. “You’re not goin’ down there. It’s too damn risky.”

            “Oh, yeah?” Harley folded her arms. “And who’s gonna stop me?”

            “Why you—”

            “Tch. Tch. I’m not talkin’ about what you think I’m talkin’ about. I need to see him. I need to set this square. I need to understand.”

            “What’s there to understand? He’s a psychopath, you’re crazy for him, and if you go see him you’re just gonna ditch Pam and break her heart all over again.”

            “Such a softy, Fry-Face. Ain’t like she didn’t ditch me already.”

            “Ditch ya?” He lowered his fork slowly. “Just how close _are_ you and Petal?”

            “Honestly?” Harley looked down at her hands, where her gray uniform was bunched in her fists. “I dunno anymore. But I gotta see him. I gotta know.”

            Harvey grumbled, running his hand through his hair. “And why’re you telling me this?”

            “Because I was hoping you’d come with. If the bastard tries anything, I want at least someone to have my back. You were my first choice.”

            Harvey sighed, the sound ragged and raspy like all sounds that came from that marred mouth. He had been so handsome once, when he was a lawyer. Once on a time, Harley had thought she could find a similar handsomeness beneath Joker’s exterior. She wondered if those old feelings would dredge themselves up again. A charged tremble found its way through her hands at the thought.

            “I mean, y’can _not_ go with me, if ya want. But if I make a _dumb_ decision, and y’know how I like those, then you’ll have Ivy angry for the rest of ya life. But if ya ain’t concerned with keeping me on the straight and na—” Harley cut herself off with a giggle. “Who’m I kidding? I ain’t never been straight about nothin’.”

            “ _Fine_. I’ll go with you. But only because I don’t need your sorry dead body on my conscience.”

            “Fair is fair. I’ll lift a key and spring ya sometime after midnight. Don’t worry. I’m sneaky.”

            “Hey, if you’re gonna get a key, then why not make a break and find Petal?”

            Harley’s face steeled. “Like I said. Sometime after midnight.”

            “All right, okay.” Harvey grunted. “ _But_ , if we’re gonna do this, sit down and eat something. You’ve barely eaten anything since you were dragged in a week ago.”

            “So, Ivy’s gone, and you take her place as my mom?”

            “If Ivy’s like your _mother_ , I don’t wanna see what you’re like with your dad.”

            “Ew! Ew! Oh my god! Ugh! I’m gonna vomit, I’m gonna hurl!”

            “Sit down and eat your goddamn supper, Quinn.”

            “Yessir!”

* * *

 

            After the lights went down, guards often picked spots to meander around the cell blocks to chat. The reality was they were meant to patrol the halls, making sure the inmates remained locked up, but that was seldom the case. When the building quieted down, and the louder loonies, like Scarecrow or Maxie Zeus, finally stopped shouting after a round of tranquilizers, it was as if the patients of Arkham didn’t exist.

            Harley had the privilege of keeping a keen ear open for gossip.

            “You hear about Sydney down below Cell Block X?”

            “Sorta. Richardson was in a rush to stop a prison riot just as she was updating me. What’s been happening? Is he still asking for… _her?_ ”

            “The grinning lunatic is always asking for something. And I said _below_ Cell Block X, moron. Y’know, down in those special water pipes they’ve got set up for Waylon Jones. Wait, what did Richardson have to say about X?”

            “You first, mine’s better.”

            “Better be. Anyway, Sydney was complaining about Jones for three days. Said he wouldn’t shut up. He was down there singing _love songs_ , but when Sydney asked who he was singing to, Jones freaked out started banging on the walls. He kept shouting that someone was stuck in his walls. I think Timmons said it took six rounds of high-speed trank darts to take him down. He’s sedated in the infirmary as we speak. Apparently he broke his arm, trying to break through solid bedrock. Whenever he gains consciousness, he just…keeps singing.”

            The guard laughed. “They’re all nuts, Hal! They just get stranger and stranger every day. It’s like we’re on one of those paranormal ghost shows.”

            “These guys are a helluva lot scarier than any ghost. So, what’s your story?”

            “Sure, Joker’s been asking for Quinn. Got a real lusty gleam in his eye, like he either wants to eat her or _eat_ her.”

            “Fucking hate the prick. Quinn was a good kid before him, y’know? I’m with Isley and Dent on this one; thinking about him even thinking about Quinn feels like I swallowed a worm. Or ten. What’s the bastard gotta do with your story?”

            “Says he’s got a few words for her. He’s been trying to bargain to see her since he was admitted.”

            “Gross, but I’m not seeing how that trumps the Clayface thing.”

            “Says he’s got a clue for her. A riddle. Like Nigma’s schtick. That’s the word he used, ‘schtick.’ Y’know how no one’s seen Poison Ivy since she was taken in for detox almost two weeks ago?”

            “Yeah?”

            “Old scar mouth says he knows where she is.”

            Two was more than Harley had hoped for when she’d formulated the plan with Two-Face over dinner, but now seemed as good a time as any to pounce.

            “Oi,” Harley rolled out of bed and sauntered up to the bars. The two guards started as if she was a corpse brought back from the dead. “Y’two mind keepin’ it down? A gal’s gotta get her beauty rest.”

            “Sorry, Quinn.” The sympathetic guard, the one who knew her before her debut as Harley Quinn, approached her cell. “Parsons and I were just leaving. Sorry for waking you.”

            “C’mere, guy.” She gestured with a tilt of her head. He took a few confused steps forward, but was smart, keeping his hand on his baton. “I remember ya, small fry. Lee Spencer, right? You stood watch outside my office before, back when I worked here. You were a cute kid…still are.”

            Spencer blushed. “Y-You remember me?”

            “Yeah, ya bought me donuts. How can a girl forget? Listen, I have a favor to ask. It’s a real emergency.”

            “What?”

            “It’s… _that_ time of the month. Ya friend there, can he get me something from the med station? I’d be eternally grateful.”

            “Parsons, get Quinn some tampons.”

            “What? Man, are you sure? We’re not supposed to have fewer than two—”

            “Y’heard him, baldy! Get me a goddamn tampon or else I’ll mop up the mess with ya face!”

            With a decidedly grossed out expression, Parsons scurried off out of the cell block, leaving Harley with Spencer. She smiled fondly, trying to replicate that back-of-the-hand caress that Ivy made seem so effortless when she did it. The thought of her and an image of that long red hair framing a green-eyed face filled her with a twinge of pain.

            “You really were a cute kid; I’m sorry about this.”

            “About w—”

            Harley yanked on his collar and smashed his face repeatedly into the bars of her cell. After the third time, he stopped struggling. The key ring on his belt came free with a tug and she let him fall to the floor. She paused at his unconscious body, feeling a pang of guilt. The least he deserved was to be out cold on a bed. She hauled him onto her cot, but spun when she heard the squeal of her cell being closed.

            Parsons was back, closing the door with one hand and a fistful of tampons in the other. Honestly, did men even understand how a vagina worked? She lunged herself at the door before he could slide the lock home, knocking him out on impact. After what he did, he didn’t deserve a bed.

            Harley stooped down and shoved two of the five tampons up his nose for good measure.

            Two-Face was sitting upright on the edge of his cot when she arrived, his head resting on his laced fingers. He stood and faced her with an arched brow.

            “That a tampon on your shoe?”

            “What?” Harley looked down, finding that one had somehow adhered itself to the bottom of her foot by the string. “ _Goddamn_ it, Parsons.”

            “I’d like to state again that this is a stupid decision—did you hear that?”

            “It’s probably just the wind.”

            It was a quiet thumping from somewhere above head, but it ended as soon as it began. “Fine. I figure we’ve got five minutes to get down there before they check the security cams or find the guards you dealt with to get the keys. I should just go back to bed and let them lock you up until Petal comes for you.”

            “Thing is she won’t, Harv. She just won’t.”

            “You’re too hard on her.”

            “I don’t mean it like that anymore!” Harley had never screamed a louder whisper. “Joker took Red! She’s in danger!”

            “Why didn’t you say that before?” He snatched up her arm, and together they ran off, in the direction of Cell Block X.

* * *

 

            Cell Block X reeked. It wasn’t a definable smell, but the stench clung to the air. It was like decay, mold, and maybe even an undertone of old blood, judging by the odd dark stains splattered on the rough concrete floor. The inmates down here had small cells, so small that even an animal wouldn’t be locked within. Each cell had a single lightbulb strung from the ceiling, lending cold illumination to the already chilly atmosphere, and casting strange shadows along the walls like ghosts.

            “You should hang back,” Harley whispered, not wanting to wake the prisoners. She had Harvey had made quick work of the prison guards outside the lockup, efficient and nearly silent. Why hadn’t they teamed up before? “Someone has to listen for incoming bacon.”

            “Wouldn’t really call these louts _bacon_ ,” he nudged one of the unconscious security guys with his foot. “Might as well be mall cops; the lightweights. I’ll hang back, Quinn, but I’m not staying too far behind. I’m warning you. Any funny business and I have no issues with knocking you out cold and dragging your scrawny behind back upstairs. Heck, they might even lighten my sentence, seeing as I stopped a crazy chick hell-bent on breaking out her ex-boyfriend.”

            “First of all, my butt is _so_ not scrawny. Second of all, no one’s breaking outta nowhere.”

            “So you say.”

            An old tingle of nostalgia washed over Harley as she moved past cell after cell. She hadn’t been down here since she had a security badge and a doctorate hanging on a wall somewhere upstairs. It was just like old times. Just like then, he was standing in the center of his cell, back to the Plexiglas, humming to the floor.

            “About time you showed,” his voice was like stone slowly grinding against stone. “Couldn’t keep away, just like always. Never seen a _bitch_ so in heat before you, pet. How much have you missed me, Harley girl?”

            He turned to her. The light overhead cast cutting shadows into his bone-white skin. His uniform hung off of his lanky frame, and he was without his routine pomade to keep that green hair at bay. It sprung up and about his head wildly, adding an extra layer of mania to his already maddened, beady eyes. His teeth were yellow and rotted, like old book pages. And there was blood on his remaining hand. Old and dried.

            The blood was not his own.

            “Not going to talk? Oh ho, I see. Still mad at your old Mr. J, hm? Why, Harley, it is _I_ who should be mad at _you_. I’d say I’d help you find the words,” he held up his right arm, where it ended at the wrist and was bound with bandages, “but I can’t lend you a _hand_ at the moment.”

            His cackle resounded in the small, old space like a flock of screaming birds. Harley kept her head high, not breaking her stare.

            “No good? Mm, the world of hand jokes is rather limited. Are you ready to get back into the swing of things, then? Now that your Chia Pet is gone and done away with, you’ll have more time to devote to me and the housework. The den is a _mess_ , and none of the boys whip up a meatloaf better than my Harl.”

            The subdued hum of the strung-up lights overhead saturated Harley’s mind. The room started to sway. Her heart was bounding, leaping, soaring, bashing into her ribs. Her veins were fizzing with delirious adrenalin. She could scale a mountain. She could jump from the roof of the asylum. She could bathe with a toaster. She could…she could…

            “Why’d you do it?” Her quiet words were a cold bash to her stomach. Her hands ached; wet was pooling in her palms.

            “Hm, shoot Rocco? I told you; none of the boys can make a meatloaf if their lives depended on it—unfortunate, really. So many things are life-dependent. People. Animals. _Plants_. Funny thing is, Harley girl, when I found your precious little rosebush, she was just covered in thorns. It was no good. Roses only pack a _small_ prick, a far cry from the real deal. She needed pruning, and plenty of it. I got someone to chop her down to size.”

            Unflinching, Harley’s eyes overflowed with tears, but she didn’t move. Even her bottom lip was still.

            “Oh, honey bun, don’t be like that!” He cooed. “Daddy was just taking care of the yard work. Now, since you came all the way just to see little old me, it’s time to spring your Mr. J free.”

            “Spring ya?” The words slipped from between Harley’s numb lips. “Mr. J?”

            “That’s right, Harl. You and me, always together.”

            “Always…” Harley’s throat was hot and sore, tears streaking her face, her nose stopping up. So shocked, she couldn’t even summon the ability to move with her tears. Two forces were waging inside of her, both appearing to be winning, and it was as simple as this: Joker and Ivy. “Together?”

            Joker studied her with a steady gaze. Always so steady. Unflinching. He had stared Death in the eyes and mouth, only to laugh in its face. Joker feared nothing, and hadn’t since they first met eyes just floors above this very spot, so long ago. He hadn’t changed. The question was, had Harley?

            “Would you like to hear my riddle, Harley girl?” He approached her now, footsteps slow and calculated. “What’s tall and green and _red_ all over?”

            He slammed his hand and stump into the Plexiglas, the drying blood smearing on the surface, obscured his face as he threw his head back. Laughing, laughing; always laughing.

            “GET DOWN!”

            Harley was tackled bodily to the ground. From the cold floor, she spied a dark blur of tangled limbs tumbling into the hall of Cellblock X. In the frenzy, what happened next came to Harley in disjointed pieces: Batman, rising from the tumult, Catwoman, following after, and the both of them hauling up some man in a white lab coat. He kicked and screamed, spittle frothing from his mouth.

            “Y’okay, Quinn?”

            Two-Face, his voice extra gravelly with strain, separated himself from Harley and helped her to her feet. It was then that she spied the gun, freshly knocked to the floor.

            “I…I’m…” Harley’s knees buckled; Harvey caught her. “I…”

            “Harley!” Selina shouted, helping Batman detain the doctor as he struggled. “Are you all right?”

            “Quinn are you—”

            “If one more person asks me how I am, I’m gonna put a _bullet_ through all our heads!” Harley shrieked, her hands tangled in her hair. “What the hell’s goin’ on? Why are _you_ two bozos here? And who’s the freak with the rabies? And _will someone shut that hyena up?_ ”

            Joker was still cackling away.

            “Gladly.” Two-Face snatched up the gun.

            “ _Harvey, no!_ ” Batman lurched forward.

            Two-Face shot off the lock before even Batman could fully move. He flung the door open and wasted no time before socking Joker right in the face. He fell like a ragdoll under Harvey’s right-hook. Shaking his out his hand, he tossed a dazed Harley the gun.

            “Ah, that felt good. Wanted to do that for years, but didn’t wanna make ya mad, Quinn.”

            “Really?”

            “Eh,” Harvey shrugged. “You’re pretty scary.”

            “Be sure to lock that back up, Dent.” Batman warned in that no-nonsense voice of his. “And keep Quinn back, before—”

            “Can it!” Selina barked, swatting the back of Batman’s head. The alarm on his face was priceless. “If Harley wanted to free that louse, she would have already. Harley, this is Professor Steven Carlyle. He was a doctor here at Arkham.”

            “Carlyle…Carlyle…” Harley shook her head. “The name’s familiar, but—”

            “Your gal pal Pamela Isley ruined my life!” The doctor bellowed, his glasses askew on his face as he struggled to free himself from Selina’s clawed grip. “She bewitched me with her damned powers and convinced me to leave my wife! She left with our daughters and I haven’t seen them since! I’m ruined! She ruined me!”

            “So…” Harley gestured vaguely at Joker’s cell with the butt of the gun. “So, what? Ya teamed up with Joker for _revenge?_ If ya wife loved ya, she would’ve come back after she knew you were brainwashed.”

            Carlyle bared his teeth.

            “But your wife remarried,” Batman spoke up with that deep, detective voice of his. “She moved on, while you were locked in an incubation tube, kept alive only by Ivy’s mad science. You couldn’t blame her, not entirely, so you pinned your anger on Ivy for years. It built, and festered, and when Joker offered you a way, you took it. When you went to find Harley tonight, you found a guard in her cell instead. So you came down here, to Joker, so you could regroup.”

            “Yes, yes! You and your little Scooby Gang are so clever!” Carlyle frothed; his skin was a pure shade of puce. “But you’ll never find her! She’s dead! Dead!”

            “Know what?” Harley’s voice was level as her arm in the air. “I’m through listenin’ to ya yabber, chump.”

            “Har—”

            The gunshot cut Selina’s protestation off. Steven Carlyle crumpled to the floor, throwing Selina off-balance. Harley shot forward, slamming the side of her hand into Selina’s neck, knocking her unconscious. Batman grabbed hold of Harley by the collar of her jumpsuit. Harvey slammed a metal chair into Batman’s head, leaving him out-cold on the floor.

            “So,” Harvey panted, lowering the chair to the floor. “Told ya I heard something on the roof. Now that everyone’s taking a nap, what’s the plan, kid?”

            Harley, likewise out of breath, turned the doctor over as he groaned and sobbed, holding his wounded thigh. She shoved his hands out of the way and stuck her thumb in the bullet wound, pushing it in further and further. Harvey stood idly by, flipping his coin; not crazy, just troubled, they all were. Right now, both of their troubled halves were in play. Steven Carlyle’s face turned an impossible shade of purple, his eyes rolling upward, and he finally passed out.

            “Wake the clown.”

            “What?! That ain’t a good idea, Quinn. You should’ve just kept the doctor awake if you wanted to find Petal.”

            “Nah, I shouldn’t’a. I wanna kill him! I wanna break the bastard so hard he’ll never get back up! Tie these guys up; take Cat’s gloves and Bat’s utilities. As for Steve here,” Harley stroked Carlyle’s cheek. “Relax, baby. I’m a doctor.”

            Carlyle would never walk right again. When asked about it later, she would have no details to give, but her knuckles would be bruised and scabbed over for weeks.

            She discarded the now broken chair to the floor in pieces, kicking some of the wood splinters from the doctor’s prone legs. Harvey watched from the wall behind where he’d tied up the Cat and the Bat, running his thumb back and forth over the ridged edge of his coin. The pistol was in his other hand. Harley stomped over the body on the floor.

            “I told ya to wake the clown, Fry-Face.”

            “And I’m tellin’ ya I ain’t doin’ it, Barbie Doll. The minute I open that cell again, this gun is gonna be between my shoulder blades, and you and the green-haired freak are gonna leave this joint.”

            “No, no!” Harley gasped. “It ain’t like that! I’m stronger now! Look!”

            Harley walked up to him slowly, her eyes on that gun, and held her hands up in front of her. Her palms were freshly cut with four bleeding crescents each, eight in total. Harvey’s eyes widened at the sight.

            “The whole time, I was fighting him. I had my hands squeezed up so tight that my nails cut, and they _hurt_ , but it was working. _I_ was working. I was _working_ , around _him_ , for the first time in years. I can _do this_. For Red.”

            Two-Face leaned his head forward, a shadow falling across the marred half of his face. “You love her that much?”

            Tears sprung forth from Harley’s face, desperation finally taking hold. _Dead_. Carlyle said she was _dead_.

            “There ain’t ever been no one more important than Red in the whole goddamn world,” Harley’s voice wavered. “And if I lose her, I’m just gonna go back to the worst. I don’t wanna go back to the dark with that monster in the cage. I don’t wanna be lost again. I wanna go home. I _want_ a home. I want Red.”

            Dust drifted down from the earthen ceiling as something heavy thudded overhead.

            “That’s too heavy to be security thugs,” Two-Face muttered, “and it’s coming this way.”

            Harvey motioned for Harley to stay put. She watched as he dashed out of the cellblock, and was startled by raspy breathing behind her.

            “Just wake him,” Harley spun, finding Zsasz staring at her, his forehead pressed against the glass of his cell. His eyes were dead. He looked like a walking skeleton. His skin was scored with tallies; some old, some red and angry. “Wake the Devil and drag him back to Hell. Wake the Devil. Wake him.”

            Eerie, though it was, it was sound advice. Harvey, despite his troubled half, would never open the door. Harley would have to do it herself. It would always come down to this.

            Drawing in a breath, she flung the Plexiglas wide open, and stared down at the miserable lump on the floor. It was so small, so fragile. How could something so tiny cause so much misery? She knelt down and did what she had always longed to do, between the days of mania and adrenalin-highs. She cracked Joker across the face with an open palm.

            He groaned and drifted upward, rubbing his cheek. “Your love-taps have always been the sweetest, Harl.”

            Harley hauled him to his feet by the wrist. In the same motion, she drew his arm behind his back, and twisted so quickly she heard bones crack and tendons tear.

            “Fuck off, clown. Your jokes ain’t funny anymore.”

            “Oh?” Joker arched a brow, as if unfazed by his newly broken wrist. “Then why are you _smiling_?”

            Harley gasped, and realized he was right. Cold sank down inside of her and curled up like a cat for a nap. She turned a lidded gaze on him.

            “Because you’re a sick fuck, and you made _me_ into a sick fuck. But that ain’t the way it is no more. Where is Ivy?”

            Joker, his expression unnervingly even, tilted his head toward the cot.

            “I’d move it myself, but you’ve made it a bit hard, Harley girl.”

            Harley shoved the aluminum frame aside, metal scraping against stone, and heard the soft click of something giving way in the wall. Dr. Carlyle had been a busy man.

            “After you,” Joker gestured to the dark opening beyond the hidden door, “dear.”

            Harley spared one glance over her shoulder, to the empty space outside Joker’s cell. Harvey would be back soon, surely. Between the hum of the lights, the soft, metered laughter just barely hissing from between Joker’s yellow teeth, and the quickly approaching sound of a stampede overhead, she couldn’t think to do anything other than step over the threshold.

            All sound vanished.

            When she was little, Harley and her brother Barry used to play in Robinson Park all the time, back when the place was just rolling green hills and full of kids’ playground equipment. Robinson Park had been through a lot of changes since then, and none of them good, but the trees around the duck pond still remained. Harley liked those trees more than anything in the park. Whenever she climbed them, she could spy caterpillar cocoons and vacated spider webs, but her favorite thing to do was spy on the birds.

            She had been too young to know better, too young to understand that when you startle a baby bird from its nest, it can’t just fly away to safety.

            Ivy looked just like the broken baby bird Harley had seen as a child. A soft, innocent thing that she had pushed and pushed until it fell to the earth below. Fell, when she only wanted to see it fly. Fell, when she only wanted to love it.

            “Red.”

            Harley fell to the floor beside the still form. It didn’t look like Ivy. The body was thin, its hair bedraggled, its green eyes bloodshot and unseeing.

            Peals of Joker’s laughter rang through the room.

            Harley flung herself onto Ivy’s body, hot tears spilling down her face. Her gut felt as if it were turning itself inside out, as if some animal were gnawing away at her from the inside out. Hollowness unlike she anything she ever knew overtook her; she couldn’t breathe.

            “You promised, Red! You promised! You said forever! _You said you’d never leave me!_ ” Ivy weighed nothing in her arms when she gathered her up, crying into the crook of her neck and into that red hair she loved so much to comb and braid, the skin and hair the sun had loved so much. “You’re liar, a liar! I loved ya more than any damn thing in my goddamn life and ya _lied to me!_ You said we’d always be together, Pamela! You _said!_ ”

            “Touching,” Joker drawled. “Really, I’m _swooning_. Honestly, I’d be more impressed if you hadn’t said so much of that to me all these years.”

            “I hate you,” Harley regarded him through squinted eyes, her whole body feeling as though it was tearing in two. “You’re a sick little prick who makes others suffer because you have no feelings of your own!”

            “Finally putting that PhD to work, after all this time, Harl? Your psychoanalysis didn’t work on me then, and it won’t work on me now. Take a good look at my arms, Harl.” He sat down on the bloodstained cot, outstretching his arms for her to see. Ugly purple splotches ran along the skin, hidden beneath the smeared blood. “Your _shweetheart’s_ poison is killing me as I speak. I’ve got maybe another week left alive, tops. Oh, I could have worn gloves, but that would have made this all for naught. Do you understand what I’m saying, Harley?”

            Harley pressed her shaking, tear-soaked lips to Pam’s. It was foolish to hope for; a kiss from Ivy wouldn’t kill her. Ivy had made her immune to her greatest weapon; what was once a blessing in was now a curse. Never a tale of more woe.

            “You have nothing left to live for now,” Joker cackled, the sound like an old man choking on nothing but a life slipping away. “But I’ll give you an ultimatum. You can wait and suffer it out, lead a _long_ , _lonesome_ life—or you can take a one-way ticket right now.”

            In his broken hand, he had somehow produced a knife. It was covered in old blood, likely the blood that stained his hands, the cot, and the green body in her arms.

            Harley accepted the blade.

            “I’m so sorry, Red.” Tears slipped down Harley’s nose. “I couldn’t protect you. I can’t do anything right. Never have. I hope we see each other again, maybe in H—”

            A howl unlike anything Harley had ever heard before filled the expanse of the cellblock. The whole building seemed to shake as someone, _something_ , found its way to the cell.

            “Croc!” Harley squeaked, encircling her arms tighter around Ivy’s body, recalling what the guards said. Croc had somehow befriended Ivy while she was held prisoner in this lockup, and here Harley was with her bloodied body and a knife in her hands. “It ain’t what it looks like!”

            “Oh, but chere, I know _exactly_ what you two did.” Waylon Jones bore down on all fours, and rammed through the narrow passageway into the secret cell. “You killed her!”

            Croc charged again. His weight fell against the floor, cracking it, and in a whirr of darkness, the four of them plummeted to the water below.

* * *

 

            Gentle fingertips, smooth as summer-supple blades of grass, ghosted across Harley’s cheek. She could almost imagine, through the dank smell of the underground water, the scent of something floral on the air.

            “Dinnertime, Croc.”

            Harley opened her eyes to blurred vision, and the sight of someone dragging Joker by the collar to Croc’s hunkered body. A hungry, lusty gleam was in his reptilian eyes.

            Harley closed her eyes just before the sickening sound wet sound of bones snapping, and blacked out once again.

* * *

 

            Robinson Park was so bright. Harley could barely see the grass surrounding her. There was just a bright blue sky, the gentle warm wind of an easy spring, and the feeling of someone’s weight resting against hers as she lay napping in the sun.

            “What were you dreaming about, just now?” Pam asked, her long red hair was draped across half her face. Her nose and cheeks were just beginning to pink from a leisurely day in the sun, nearly obscuring the pale spray of freckles there. “You were muttering in your sleep about jokes and crocodiles—not that that’s unusual, I suppose.”

            Harley smiled lazily, staring into eyes so green they were almost phosphorescent. “Don’t remember. It must’ve been good, because I think ya were in it.”

            “That’s the first time someone told me a dream with me in it was a _good_ one.”

            “Then I guess I should tell ya about my dreams more often,” Harley planted a light kiss on Pam’s freckled cheek. “Because when you’re in them, they’re always good.”

            “Sweet-talker,” Pam huffed, but moved in closer beside Harley on the blanket. “We were talking about the wedding, before you dozed off. As per usual.”

            “What wedding?”

            “Ours.” Ivy squeezed her hand a bit too tightly. Harley’s palm stung in four distinct places, in little crescents of pain. “I want a small affair, all right? No three-ring circus; you aren’t a clown, after all, no matter how much you act like one, sometimes. We both know my parents won’t come; they’ve never agreed with the fact that I date women, so the fact that I’m marrying one will hardly be better for them.”

            “Are ya still thinking about wearin’ white?” Harley chuckled. “Because, uh, that would be a lie on _both_ our parts.”

            “Of course. It’s tradition. Harley, what’s this on your arm?”

            Harley upturned her palm, revealing not only four fresh cuts from her own nails, but a rash along the inner part of her forearm.

            “Looks like,” the words felt oddly weighted, and suddenly the sun was less bright, “Poison ivy.”

            “Impossible. There’s no poison ivy here.”

            Harley sucked in a breath with closed eyes. She wanted to cry, but no tears came.

            “Pam, does the name Harley Quinn mean anything to you?”

            “You mean harlequin? The clown learned about in our literary classics class back in college? You never were able to pronounce it correctly, though I let it slide because I thought it was kind of cute how you made it sound like your own name.”

            “What about Mad Hatter? Harvey Dent?”

            “I know you’re not fond of my ex-boyfriend, Harl, but that’s really a bizarre insult, even for you. You know he has bipolar disorder—you diagnosed him! Why are you acting so odd?”

            Harley rolled over, on top of Pam. She ran her fingers through that long red hair, traced them over the crest of her cheekbone, hot with a flush at their sudden proximity. She wanted to memorize it all, and throw it all away.

            “I love you, Pamela.” Harley moaned, feeling tears spring up at last. “I love you so goddamn much, it hurts. I want so badly for this to be real. Even in a dream, you’re too good to be true.”

            Pam took Harley’s face in her hands, a smile serene and knowing on her face.

            “It could be real, Harl. All you’d have to do is stay. No more hardship, no more pain. You can stay with me forever. Outside this dream, your Pamela Isley is likely dead. Your connection with Joker is all but severed. You have no one. Here, you can have me for always. Just stay.”

            Lips trembling, Harley gently kissed Pam’s forehead.

            “I can’t. Red would want me to move forward, even if I feel like I’m dying inside. I can’t die, not yet. I have to know. I have to see this through.”

            Pam stroked Harley’s bangs out of her eyes. Harley kissed her wrist. “When will you come back to me?”

            “I don’t know,” Harley whimpered, “but not today. My dreams will always be filled with you.”

            “Always together, Harl.”

            Harley pressed their foreheads together, bright light overtaking her vision. “Always together, Red.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell I have no idea what the layout of Arkham would be like?


	4. Fire-Forged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley sees a ghost.

Harley tried to sit up, but pain rocketed through her body even when she breathed. It didn’t take much to know she had awoken in the hospital. Between the beeping of machines, rubbing alcohol in the air, and the smell of burnt coffee, the aura was rather distinct.

            She groped to the side for some sort of remote, to page someone and let them know she was alive, but her hand found something softer.

            “Oh _goddamn it_ ,” Harley’s breath hitched, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “I can’t believe this shit. Oh my god. Not a damn break, huh?”

            “Harl,” Ivy’s eyes were green as grass, hardly inches from her own. “What are you going on about? I’m trying to sleep.”

            This was Hell. Hell was believing, over and over, that Ivy was still alive. Hell was remembering, over and over, that she was dead.

            “Ivy’s dead,” like ripping off a Band-Aid. “I held her cold, dead body in that cell. I heard Joker say—”

            “Harley, look at me.” Ivy’s voice was soft and warm as the hand she laced through Harley’s. “ _Feel_ me. I’m here. You’re here. You’re safe, sweet pea. You made it.”

            “Don’t believe ya,” Harley pressed her palms to her eyes. “This is just some awful dream I’m gonna wake from and find out she’s dead! She’s dead, and it’s all my fault! _I killed ya, Pamela_.”

            The vision of Ivy beside her sighed softly, the faint scent of something floral ghosting across Harley’s face. An arm snaked around Harley’s waist, and for just a moment, she allowed herself to lean into the apparition beside her; it was warm and soft, so like Pam.

            “‘ _Je me fous du monde entier_ —’”

            “What’re you doing?” Harley interrupted, unused to hearing Ivy’s voice in a manner so melodic; low and breathy, following the beat of the melody. It made Harley’s head spin with heartache.

            “You don’t know French, Harley.” Pam whispered, resting her face against Harley’s cheek so gently she could feel her eyelashes brush her skin. “Waylon sang to me, over and over, while I was in that cell. If I weren’t real, how would I be singing in that way just now? I know you’re in shock, darling, after that fall, but think logically. Each time Croc sang to me, I thought of you.”

            “I could be making it up. Anything’s real in a dream.”

            “‘ _Tant qu'l'amour inond'ra mes matins—_ ’”

            “Stop it.”

            “‘ _Tant que mon corps frémira sous tes mains_. _Peu m'importent les problems—_ ’”

            “Stop!” Harley whispered, tears running from her eyes and into her hairline. “How come you ain’t dead? How come?”

            “The water revitalized me. When Joker had me contained, he kept me dehydrated. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw water, felt the sun on my skin. He fed me salt. Kept me chained to a wall. I thought I was done. I’d given up all hopes of seeing you again. It eventually became so bad that I hallucinated it was you down there, instead of Croc, singing me those songs. I thought you were telling me it was okay. That it was okay to die. So I let myself go.”

            “You thought…you thought I’d just… _let_ you die?”

            “It’s a little more complicated than that. I was…in immense pain. I thought the suffering would never end, I thought you—”

            “It was all my fault! I never shoulda—if I hadn’t—if I had just—I shouldn’t’a—”

            “Shouldn’t have what, Harl?”

            Harley turned her head, and it was as if the oxygen in the room had gone. The muted sunlight from the window behind Pam traced the whole of her with a fine edge of gold. Her eyes were so green, so bright, and most importantly, so _alive_. In this moment, Harley wanted. She wanted so badly, and yet she didn’t know what she was yearning for. Pam did that to her, in a way no one else ever had. It would always be that way; wanting more and more and more, until she took everything from her. It was a selfish feeling, and it filled Harley with bitterness. Childhood stories always said love was an equal match of give and take; Harley had grown to accept that she was destined to perpetually give.

            But Ivy made taking seem all right.

            “Loved you,” she whispered, and so, so carefully, mindful of each needle in her skin, placed a hand on Ivy’s face. “Things that I like, they always get hurt in the end. When I love something, I dunno how to stop. I keep going and going, until they push back at me, or run away. If I had just kept to _myself_ , if I had just stayed away, you never woulda got hurt. Not the first time, or this time. You’d be right as rain. I just wanted to love ya, and ya fell. Ya fell from the nest, and your wings broke. You weren’t the same after I pushed ya out. So I tried loving ya harder. I picked ya up, and I took ya home, and I wrapped your wings too tight, and I didn’t tell no one I had ya. Until it was too late.”

            The expression on Ivy’s face told Harley she didn’t quite understand. Of course she didn’t. She wasn’t there, that day in the park. It was the first life she ever took, and she swore then she’d never take another. What a lie that was.

            “Do you know why we’re in the hospital, Harley?”

            Harley sniffed, closing her eyes. “Because I’m no good. I couldn’t protect you.”

            “Look at yourself, Harl.” Ivy’s eyes darted over Harley as well; mixed with the pity there was a familiar edge of hunger, a glint which made Harley shiver to reciprocate. “You’re all banged up; why is that?”

            “Because we fell like a hundred _feet_ ,” Harley stated slowly. “Y’got a head injury?”

            “You have protected me, Harley. You saved my life at the pier fishery. You saved my life from dying like a withering shrub in Arkham, in more ways than one. You keep me alive in more ways than you think.”

            “No, no, no,” Harley breathed, pressing her good hand to her eyes. “ _You’re_ the one, from the very beginnin’—always lookin’ out for—ya always took me in an’—made me safe—ya—ya so _good_ , Red—so—”

            “When we crashed to the tunnel below, you broke nearly every bone on your left side. Batman says it means you shielded me. Always a fool, Harl. The sweetest fool.”

            “Keep insulting me; I think it’s making this more real.”

            A bitter sort of laughter shot from Pam. “You still think you’re dreaming?”

            “Or maybe I’m dead, too.”

            “The only one dead around here is that pig that put his hands on you all these years.”

            Harley stiffened. “He’s gone?”

            Gentle fingertips brushed Harley’s hair out of her face. Ivy was gauging her reaction, using that carefully neutral expression of hers that she used when she waited for an answer. At times, it aggravated Harley. Despite all she felt for the plant queen, she knew that there would always be something lacking in Pam, something that was never quite sweet or maternal, no matter how much her favorite redhead longed to be so within. Ivy was perpetually a dose of long-needed medicine, sometimes bitter, sometimes spiked with sugar, but always at least marginally unpleasant.

            It was that grating dichotomy that drew Harley in—but it was moments like these, these secret moments, the carefully metered softness, the distant yet warming affection, that made her stay.

            God, she wanted to kiss her. She wanted to sink into that damnably red hair, and never come back out, twisting and twisting within…

            “It’s all right, sunflower.” Ivy said finally, resting her head against hers, their noses touching. “You alone have the right to cry. You loved him. It’s okay to mourn.”

            It was a terrible feeling, simultaneous loss and hatred. Tears flowed anew from Harley; she wondered if her face would ever be dry again. Each piled up year, the hurt and the laughter, the highs and humiliation, the kisses and the blows, came rushing back to her with more clarity than she ever had in the moment. Harley clung to her, crying into her hair, crying about the man she loved to the woman she loved. All the while, Pam stroked her hair, peppering her face with kisses as she sang Harley to sleep. The song was the same as before, but in English, honestly for Harley’s sake.

            “‘ _I couldn’t care less about the whole world. As long as love will flood my mornings, as long as my body will tremble under your hands, the problems make little difference to me, my love, because you love me_.’”

* * *

 

            Once on a time, Selina thought to herself, _why her?_

Looking at Harley now—all splayed out on a hospital cot, half of her body plastered in casts and wrapped in gauze—she was reminded of that fated day. The day she realized, flat-out, she could never hate the little jester girl. Never hate her, though she they had exchanged blows on more than one occasion, though Selina had nearly been turned into kitty kibble when Harley strapped her down on a conveyer belt to her doom.

            All that hatred was thrown out the window when Joker had done the same to Harley.

            Certain friendships were fire-forged, and her disdain for Harley paled in comparison to her hatred for the Grinning Man. If anything, his treatment toward Harley—the simultaneous vitriol and coddling sweetness—made her determined to care for the younger girl more. After all, someone had to. But she soon no longer shouldered that burden, the desperate need to love the misguided little fool, as it was no longer hers alone to bear. Love born of obligation was love enough, but love born of its own accord, of mutual pain and mutual need, that was love of a different nature, and Harley and Ivy…they _had_ that.

            Ivy breezed into the room the way she had breezed into Harley’s life. Or, well, breezing was a relative term.

            “Ivy, how are—”

            _SMACK._

            Wide-eyed, Selina pressed a palm to her freshly slapped cheek, disbelieving of the past few seconds, of Ivy storming in and assaulting her without so much as a word. The confusion quickly transformed into rage.

            “What the _fuck_ , Pamela?!”

            “How _dare you?_ ” Ivy towered over Selina, more tree than rosebush despite her thorniness. “You absolute waste of oxygen! Putrid sack of filth! Rotten little—”

            “Did I forget to recycle a cup, Chia Pet?”

            Ivy seized hold of Selina before she could react, taking her by the neck and slamming her face first into the nearest wall. Selina’s first thought was that Harley must be heavily sedated to stay asleep through Ivy’s shouting and Selina’s subsequent string of foul curses upon being thrust against the hard surface.

            “This is all _your_ fault,” Ivy’s voice was now a deadly whisper, her breath hissing out in a stream of sickly sweet air—almonds. She was breathing cyanide into Selina’s face. “Harvey told me you’d seen Harley while she was detained in Arkham. She told you I was missing. But instead of teaming up with _her_ , and helping her find me, you stuck with your favorite prize _cock_ and rode him around the city on a wild goose chase, and Harley was stuck with Harvey for her _idiotic_ rescue mission!”

            Selina was still trying to overcome the shock of hearing the word “cock” slip from Ivy’s mouth. “Br—Batman got a lead from someone inside the mental hospital, Ives. That douche-brick Stephen Carlyle paid a janitor to let it slip that you’d been hired by an out-of-town cosmetics firm to mass-produce your trademark lipstick. Y’know, the _mind-control_ one? We were halfway out of Gotham when Nightwing commed-in with intel a security guard had been blabbing about Joker bragging on taking you.”

            Selina yelped; something she said only made Ivy tighten her grip. She was starting to see stars and garters. “You thought I’d abandoned Harley for a quick buck?”

            “Well,” Selina gasped, “when you put it like that, it’s _ridiculous_. How could I have thought you _wouldn’t_ hop on the chance to become a shady millionaire? For someone who likes trees so much, you’d think you’d be against paper currency.”

            “You left Harley alone, Selina. Look what’s become of it! Harvey Dent is an unreliable, wishy-washy lout with a trigger-happy finger. Because you chose a _good lay_ over Harley, now she’s _here_.”

            “Wait, are you insulting me?” Selina tried to shift her weight, maybe pin Ivy to the wall to see how she liked it, but realized too late that the flowerpot in the corner of the room now had wild vegetation writhing out from within, and the force of it was wrapped around her legs. “Or are you complimenting me? Sounds like you think she wouldn’t be in this mess if I was with her.”

            With a growl, Ivy ripped Selina from the wall and tossed her to the floor. Halfway asphyxiated, Selina only had the wherewithal to slide to a stop before hitting a supply cabinet. She rose to her feet, and was faced with the purest fury she had ever seen Ivy bare.

            Selina sighed, and lolled her head back. “Oh, my god. Ives. Can we not do this?”

            “Do what? Talk on your incompetence? Your lack of forethought? Your inability to _think_ when you’re so wooed over? Talk on when you’d forgotten your personal code of honor amongst thieves? Talk on the fact you _left_ Harley _behind_ , and now she’s broken and shattered because of _you_.”

            With a breath, Selina looked up at Ivy through the fringe her hair, readying for a fight.

            “Ivy, you’re talking to yourself.” Selina took a slow step forward. “I had no way of knowing Harley would find out you were kidnapped or that she would team up with Dent. You, right now, are _blaming_ yourself for Harley’s condition, even though you had no way to stop what happened. You probably don’t even remember the first few days after you were readmitted to Arkham, do you?”

            Ivy, silent, folded her arms and sucked in her lips. It was a petulant expression, one she had taken in from Harley years ago. They had that effect on one another; trading similarities and ticks so seamlessly that they created their own world and atmosphere, even when they weren’t the only ones in the room. Living with the two of them made Selina a perpetual third-man out.

            “Let me shine some light on the pieces you’re missing,” Selina stated calmly. Honestly, she had become so chill since teaming up with those two; she had to, because neither of them appeared able to keep a level-head, and if she didn’t, she’d be nearly fresh out of friends in Gotham. “That’s probably why you’re being so pissy, too. Ah buh buh! If you hit me, I’m not going to tell you anything! Good, that’s right, put the freaky vines down. When you were taken down to detox the day you and Harley arrived at Arkham again, there was an extra doctor in the room. Do you remember Stephen Carlyle?”

            Ivy arched a brow. “Well, I imprisoned him in his own greenhouse, harvested his organic matter, and created dozens of semi-functioning clones to do my bidding, lived in his house for nearly a year, and pretended to be married to him for just as long, so I guess the answer is yes. One tends to remember when they make scientific history with mostly household objects and not revealing their secrets to the world at large.”

            Selina blinked.

            “What?” Ivy drawled.

            “Batman…did _not_ tell me the full story on this one. Oh my God, Pam, you’re _really, really_ evil.”  
            A slight smirk stole over Ivy’s lips. “Thank you.”

            Selina shuddered. “Anyway. Stephen Carlyle, _oddly enough_ , was still pretty mad at you when Joker contacted him. It wasn’t hard for him to sneak into Arkham and hide amongst the orderlies there. He slipped sedatives into the toxin-neutralizer they hose you down with and took your unconscious body to Joker’s cell, where they’d somehow rigged a sort of hidden room. What happened inside…is between you and Joker.”

            “And Harley,” Ivy stated.

            Selina squinted. “Right. Cool. Good for you guys.”

            Ivy’s expression clouded over as she thought of something faraway. She had a tendency to do that, detach from conversations and let herself drift, even if she was in the middle of talking. Sometimes, it was so easy to remember that there was a reason for her to be in Arkham, aside from her megalomania and desperate need to wipe out all of humanity (likely Harley was an exception, which brought up a healthy quota of Adam and Eve jokes that she’d learned long ago not to bring up about the two of them).

            “Of course Harley deserves to know,” Ivy said, drawing herself back to the present. “After today, there won’t be much opportunity for us to speak.”

            “What? No, Batman has it covered. After what you two have gone through, he’s working on getting the GCPD to back off on the charges against Bruce—who, by the by, is paying for Harley’s medical bills, so the next time you try to talk shit about my taste in men, just remember that my ‘prize cock’ has a fat wallet.”

            “Just…” Ivy was suddenly so visibly weary, almost as if an entirely different person had replaced her on the spot where she stood. “Just go, Selina. I need to spend today with Harley. She deserves it, at least.”

            “What do you—?”

            Ivy affixed her with a strong glare.

            “Right. Okay. Well, I guess I’m going to go get treated for _cyanide_ poisoning, seeing as I’m in the hospital and all.”

            “…Sorry.”

            “No, you’re not.”

            “You’re right, I’m not.”

            “I’ve gotta start keeping a mental catalogue of things you’ll kill for. Here, I’ll lay it out right now: Plants, and Harley. There we go, all set.”

            “Selina,” Ivy stopped her just as her hand touched the doorknob. “You care for Harley, right?”

            Selina turned. “She’s a good kid. She’s always been a good kid, deep beneath it all. Now, with that asshole out of her life, his headless corpse in a morgue where med students can carve him up, she can probably go back to what she was again, or somewhere close. Cliché though the phrase may be, she’s like a sister to me. A sister I never asked for, wanted, or really liked, but a sister all the same. You don’t always get to choose who you care for in life, especially when they choose you first.”

            “Can you make me a promise?”

            “Will my promises mean anything to you? You said I was a dishonorable thief not fifteen minutes ago, right?”

            Ivy glared. “Never let anyone put their hands on her again.”

            “But you—”

            “I mean it. She’s tough, she’s clever…she’s brilliant and brave, but she’s also weak. Weak in that way all humans are, you know. Don’t let that weakness take her under again. Whisk her away. Take her somewhere distant and remote. Promise me.”

            Selina hesitated.

            “ _Promise me_.”

            “I promise,” she whispered.

            The gravity in the room relented with Ivy’s sigh. “Thank you. Here, take this.”

            From the pocket of her jeans, Ivy drew an envelope. Selina took it, but Ivy shook her head when she tried to open it.

            “What is this?” Selina asked, pocketing the paper. “This better not be a love letter to Harley. I am _not_ delivering this to her so she can read it when you’re not around.”

            “You _impossible_ —” Ivy held up a hand to stop herself. “It’s not a love letter to Harley. When next you’re alone today, read it. Don’t let anyone see it, even Harley. Especially Harley.”

            Selina squinted. “It’s not a love letter to _me_ , is it?”

            Ivy closed her eyes. “Wow, am I really so obvious? You’re the fire in my loins. Oh darling.”

            Selina shuddered again. “Ew. I feel like I swallowed a worm. Disgusting.”

            “Take the note. Now, please, go.”

            Selina had time to look over her shoulder once before she shut the door, just in time to see Ivy fall to her knees by Harley’s bed side as if in prayer, clasping her unbroken hand and sobbing into it like a child firstborn into the world. She said one thing before she lapsed into tear-choked song:

            “ _I’m sorry_.”

* * *

 

            “I can honestly say you are one of few people in this world who continuously surprises me, Selina.” Bruce asked slowly, leaning against the wall opposite the little padded cot the doctor was treating her from, a bouquet of flowers in his hands unintended for her. “How exactly does someone end up with cyanide poisoning in a hospital?”

            Selina scowled at him, moving the clear plastic mask from her mouth just long enough to stick her tongue out at him and resumed inhaling the dose of amyl nitrite to counteract any damage Ivy may have done.

            “Take pity on me,” Selina’s words were muffled by the mask. “One of my only friends in this city is hospitalized, and the other one just kicked my ass. I’m in a vulnerable state, Brucey—and not in the fun way.”

            “I…honestly don’t think vulnerable states should be considered fun, Selina.” Bruce stated slowly.

            Selina almost laughed. “It’s actually pretty comical that you don’t hear the double-meaning in that statement, darling.”

            The doctor had long excused herself to retrieve the intravenous version of the drug Selina was inhaling. She would likely be back soon, but Selina took the opportunity of their seclusion to extend her hand in the hopes of Bruce filling it. To her surprise, he did, and allowed her to draw him in close so she could rest her head against his chest.

            “Bringing a freshly cut bouquet around the infamous tree-hugger is a ballsy move.”

            This close, Selina could hear a small, restrained chuckle run through Bruce’s chest. “I think I’ll manage.”

            They were both so tough all the time, soft things fitting themselves into hard shells that sometimes hardly fit, but together they could almost lay themselves bare, if only for a moment. Bruce set down the bouquet meant for Harley, and drew her in closer, just for a second, and in that moment they were just a man and a woman. No masks or capes, no whips or grappling hooks, no strange tendencies to gravitate toward the night and leap from rooftops. Selina allowed a single sunny thought slip in like a golden thread—of a life of Sundays in the park, of dinner parties that neither were called away from or were planning to rob, of being satisfied with life at its most basic forms of joy.

            But then he let go, and drifted back to the wall, and Selina was left colder than before.

            “Why did Ivy poison you?”

            “She thinks too highly of me,” Selina smirked wryly. “But it’s okay, we’re better for it. Boys aren’t the only ones who become better friends after a fight. It takes struggle to grow. And, now, we have a promise to fall back on.”

            “What’s that?”

            “We basically decided that, no matter what, Harley comes first.”

            Bruce cocked a brow. “Why’s that?”

            “Isn’t it obvious?” Selina matched him brow for brow. “After all this time, she deserves to be put first.”

* * *

 

            Harley awoke to an empty bed and the aftershock of fitful dreams. She patted the empty side of her cot with her hands, as if Ivy could be hiding in the sheets, but was of course met with nothing but the faint traces of her floral scent saturated into the pillowcase.

            She rolled over, finding flowers on the nightstand.

            “Hey, hey, hey!” A nurse ran into the room, trying to urge Harley to lie back down. “Take it easy, if you want up and around, I need to get you crutches.”

            “Did—” Harley panted, surprised at how much effort it took to try and get out of bed. “Did someone leave me these flowers? Are they still here?”

            “Yes, yes,” the nurse answered, “but—please stop pushing me—let me get you crutches. Then you can see them.”

            “Thank you,” Harley felt strung out, desperate. As if she had all these strings, stretching outward and tied to things, but was unaware of them until they were cut. She was adrift, a boat at sea. In a moment, she was presented with the crutches, and she was able to get most of her weight on her good leg long enough to support herself correctly. “Where are they? I need to see them.”

            “Waiting room. I’ll take you.”

            “Nah,” Harley moved determinedly to the door, “I’ve been in here more than enough times to know my way around kid, but thanks.”

            “But—”

            “But nothing, man. Fuck off, y’ain’t my ma.” Speaking of her mother. “Y’got a phone I can use?”

            “I thought you said you didn’t need my help.”

            “I can find the lobby and the toilet, shithead, but phones are usually a _bit smaller_ and harder to locate. Y’gonna help me or what?” The nurse grumbled as he moved past her out the door. “That’s right; earn that paycheck, little bitch.”

            The ladies at the nurses station all eyed Harley sadly, either remembering her from previous visits or just the general knowledge of her former status as Joker’s besotted best gal. She never understood why people pitied her before, but the world was a bit more in perspective now that her eyes were beginning to open up. She felt like a baby; all scared and weepy and new.

            “Hello?”

            “Mama.” God, it had been a pretty number of years since she used that. “It’s Harl—Harleen.”

            “Harley!” Her mother’s tone made her neck slide back. “I was just on my way to the car! I can’t believe he—that you—”

            “Ma, slow down. What’re ya talkin’ about?”

            “Your girlfriend called me and told me everything. _Everything_. Oh, Harley, I had no idea what that _lunatic_ had done to you all these years! You never told me any of it! And the news was always so vague when you were arrested. First he throws you from a window, now this? Don’t worry, I’m on my way.”

            “Ma—wait, who told ya about the fall? Who called ya?”

            “I said your girlfriend.”

            “Selina called you?”

            “No, Harley. Unless you have two girlfriends. I’m trying to be tolerant, but dating two people at once is where I draw the line.”

            “Ew, no I’m not dating Seli—Pam? Pam called you?”

            “Harley? Harley are you there?”

            Harley smashed the phone on the hook and took off as fast as she could toward the waiting room. She threw open the doors, expecting to throw herself into familiar green arms again, but was greeted by a different sight.

            “Harley!”

            “Fry-Face? Question Man? Why the fuck are _you_ idiots here?”

            Nigma pressed a palm to his chest. “Rude, honestly. My dear, we’re here to see you. I’m out on good behavior, and in case it’s escaped your keen sense of sight, Fry-Face here is in a similar state of health as you.”

            “Fuck off, Riddles.” Harvey grunted, and Harley realized he was seated in a wheelchair, not one of the tacky seats lining the room. “How are ya, Quinn?”

            “Lookin’ pretty good, compared to you. What happened?”

            Harvey was more gored up than usual. He was practically a mummy compared to Harley’s fix-up job. “That sound I heard above the cellblock? Yeah, that was Croc. Freak got loose and decided to soften me up like a favorite pillow. How the hell did you get so roughed up?”

            “Croc. He smashed us all through the floor and I fell on my good side. Selfies are gonna be a pain in the ass.”

            “Selfie?” Nigma raised a brow.

            “Ain’t important, where’s Red?”

            “Petal left yesterday, kid.” Two-Face had his hand wrapped tight around his favorite old coin—it was bent in half into a near right-angle, probably from his tussle with Croc. He didn’t look happy about it. “You’ve been out like a light for nearly a week.”

            “Then—then who gave me the flowers?”

            “Selina told me you’d appreciate the gesture,” Bruce Wayne walked in, wearing that ugly suit of his that resembled the color scheme of a bruised banana. Selina wasn’t too far behind, but looked drawn and exhausted. Harley must have missed something big while she was out. “I thought paying for your medical expenses was gesture enough, but she insisted.”

            “I know you like gestures, Harl.”

            “WHERE THE HELL IS RED?”

            The rest of the waiting room was now fully aware of the strange lot of them, standing around, half injured and screaming.

            “Selina, take me home.”

            “All right.”

            “Selina,” Bruce said disparagingly.

            “What? Look at her, just some broken bones and scrapes and bumps. She’ll be just as fine with me as she is in this place.”

            “And the medical expenses I’m paying?”

            Selina shrugged. “You volunteered. I could have paid them myself, but you wouldn’t give me the chance. This is really what you get for being so generous.”

            “You aren’t taking my car,” Bruce said flatly.

            Selina’s mouth opened wide. “Rude, you were my ride here.”

            “Ladies,” Nigma spoke up, looking at the end of his cane. “One dark bird shouts the name of it. Beggar can’t buy it, but richer can’t live without it.”

            Silence fell between the lot of them.

            “A _car_ ,” a random man in the corner answered.

            “Who said that?!” Riddler shot up from his seat whirling around to find the speaker, but tossed a set of keys over his shoulder. “It’s the only green Mazda in the lot, you can’t miss it. I’d come with you, but I have a _spoilsport_ to find and give a piece of my mind. Oh, and do be careful, it’s a rental.”

            Selina, with a grin, jangled the keys in front of Bruce’s face. “Better luck next time, lover boy.”

* * *

 

            The Sirens’ hideout was empty. Selina checked each floor, even Ivy’s greenhouse, and found not a single living soul within.

            “She’s gone, Harley.” Selina descended the stairs, out of breath from running for Harley, who could hardly stand on her own feet without her crutches. “But I checked the security systems; someone triggered the motion-activated lights by your bedroom just over an hour ago.”

            “She was here,” Harley panted. “Where would she go? She just gave me this huge pretty speech about not leaving me, and here she is, not telling me where she’s going when I’ve been hospitalized. And she called my mother and told her _everything_ about the past five years, and now she’s coming into town to make amends. Why?! Why is she doing this?”

            “Is it…?” Selina spoke up slowly, placing her hand on Harley’s shoulder. “You don’t think she’s…that this is…?”

            “Her last will and testament? _Fuck that_. If she’s killin’ herself, I’m gonna bring her back to life and kill her again. She would never be that stupid. She would never do that to herself.”

            “What about to you?”

            “What _about_ me?”

            Selina chuckled. “Figures. There must be somewhere else she’d go, maybe somewhere special to you guys?”

            Harley froze.

            “Harl?”

            “But…but why would she…? Not there…”

            “Harl! Communicate!”

            “Help me back to the car, we’re heading outta here. We’re going back.”

            “Back where?”

            “Back to the place where me and Red met.”


	5. Tiny Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ivy plays hide and seek with Harley's emotions

Really, though, there were two options. Ivy, though conservative and quiet, was somehow still all about grand gestures, just like Harley. They had so little in common, sometimes, but it was moments like these that brought clarity into why they clicked. They understood each other, somehow, sometimes without even speaking, or communicating, even if the lines did get crossed now and again.

            The first option was the museum, where they had run into each other in spandex and masks. It was so easy to recall, the breathless risk of it, running through the halls, dodging bullets and taking the other’s hand. Harley could remember with vivid clarity, so palpable that she was certain she could reach out and stroke the memory, the exuberant expression on Pam’s face when they’d managed to ditch the cops. Her red hair, always so wild, had twisted through the tearing wind in mad helixes, the same wind that brought extra color to her cheeks as she smiled with those pretty lips parted to white teeth.

            But there was a time before that, when they had met each other. It was a naked moment, a moment vulnerable and tender as an apple flayed open in the sun. Arkham was by no means a beautiful place, but for a small glimmer of time, before Harley had fallen into the captivating presence of Joker, the woman known as Poison Ivy had been the loveliest thing Harley had ever seen.

            “If you don’t mind my asking,” Selina asked when they pulled up to a stoplight. “Now that Ives isn’t here, and you’re in this car, and I’m here, and you guys seem to be on quite the journey, I gotta ask: Why her?”

            “What?” Harley had only half-registered what Selina was saying; her thoughts were still entangled in long red hair and a voice like sunlight and honey.

            “Don’t get me wrong, I like that you two are together. You’re _way, way_ happier that way, but I really only understand Ivy’s intentions in the whole thing. It’s that whole _baby, you complete me_ kinda spiel. You’ve always been a tough one to judge, Harls—no offense. I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you’re just looking to Ivy as a replacement for—”

            “Red and him ain’t nothin’ alike!” Harley curled her hands into fists. “Red can be mean, and cruel, and cold. She’s even hurt me a couple of times, in my heart and my head. But she’s _different_. She doesn’t try to make me into something I ain’t. Joker, he wanted me…he wanted a patsy, a pretty little doll girl to call him ‘Daddy’ and do whatever he wanted. Back when Red got hurt, you told me that he did something to Batman, took someone from him. I know. I know all about that poor little kid. Jason Todd. I don’t know nothin’ about him, but I’ve got his name memorized. I had to accept it to keep living the way I was. One day I was dumb, real dumb. Went to the library and looked up little Jason in old newspapers, so I’d have a face to…to pray for, I guess. Sometimes, when he kissed me, I’d imagine a little black-haired boy, crying for his mom, and I’d remember that the hands on me were the ones that hurt that little…that little _boy_.”

            “Yet you stayed?”

            “I know,” Harley’s voice was small now, a strangled little whisper barely louder than the traffic outside. “It was so fucked up. I was so _fucked up_. I knew he’d done so many bad things, but some part of me, a shorted out little piece of my brain, told me it didn’t matter, that the person I had become couldn’t feel bad about it. So I took every bad thing in, every name, and kept it inside. Got to the point where my heart felt like a casket, full of all these people and names that Joker had taken.”

            “Ivy’s killed people, too.” Selina added slowly. “She’s…also been pretty bad to you, too. You said she’s knocked your noggin a couple times, talked down to you—”

            “Well, duh.” Harley rolled her eyes. “I ain’t blind, cat. She’s apologized for all that. The important thing, to me, is that she’s not done it again. She was trying to get through to me…I was real sick then. I was completely lost in myself…in _him_.  When I first started to think about Red as something other than a friend, I tried to rationalize it, tried to make her out to be more like Joker. If they were the same, then it made sense that I loved them both. But that wasn’t true. I loved Red because she was different. She was still a killer, but aren’t we all? Every one of us in that crazy old house has taken at least one life or another. I think that, out of all of us, Ives had the better intention—and by that, I mean she actually had a plan.

            “But that was where the similarities ended. Every time…every time I started to think ‘Gee, Ives ain’t much like Mr. J’ I’d high-tail it and leave. I hurt her. I hurt her so many times. Ivy was cold where Joker was passionate, and heated where Joker was distant. Joker put on this ‘best gal’ act when other people were around, put on this big show of how I was his girl, and that no one could have me, but when we were alone…sometimes it was like I didn’t even exist. And if I did exist, I was too loud about it, or too dumb about it, and…well, we all know how that went.

            “But when me and Red are alone…I think that being sweet, being tender, loving someone when no one is around, is so much better than pretending in front of a lot of people. I never doubted that Red cared for me, even when we were just friends. I think that, even before that, I forced myself into her life because I was scared she’d leave me behind. Leave, before I had the chance to know what she was, who she was. To me. Nothing mattered to her, not a damn person, but…I wanted to. I wanted to make her see me. To think of me. What I felt for _him_ was kinda the same, but with Red, with Red I was actually seen. I think I’ve always wanted her, in some way. I was too cloudy back then to know for sure, but I remember that she made me smile. That was the important part, after all. I didn’t have to laugh, or pretend around her. No makeup or costumes…I could just…I could just smile.”

            “So, Ivy makes you feel like a better person,” Selina nodded, take a left turn. Arkham now loomed on the horizon. “Never thought I’d hear someone say that about her. I had to ask; even though she and I are far from besties, it would honestly be a major blow if you were just…using her to fill a void. I do have another question, though, and I hope you don’t get offended.”

            “Shoot.”

            “If you’re _bi_ , have you ever been, y’know…I’m a _very_ pretty lady, Harley. Some would say sexy, as well. Others would say suave, sophisticated, charming, heroic—”

            “I had a _tiny_ crush on you back when I debuted as Harley Quinn, cat.” Harley rolled her eyes. “The tiniest. The catsuit definitely suits you. Satisfied?”

            “All right, good. Just making sure you had some good taste left in you. Ivy’s nice and all, but I just wanted to make sure you’d still take a fine merlot over a kale smoothie, if you know what I mean.”

            “Oh my god, we’re done talking. Park over there and help me out.”

            “We would never work out, though,” Selina continued, getting out with a slam of the door. “I’m super-cool, and you’re way…well, _not_. It’s that whole cats versus dogs thing.”

            “Ya don’t ever have to worry about that, because I ain’t ever leaving Red.”

            “Yeah,” Selina shook her head, a smile broad across her face as she joined Harley. “Go figure. If it’s any consolation, I always held onto the hope you two idiots would find your way eventually. So, you’re really just going to walk right in like you own the place? You just escaped from the hospital under police custody, you know.”

            “ _What!_ ”

            “Just kidding. Bruce made an appeal; at the moment, you’re on parole. He’s just the worst, the softest of softies; he said the appeal was for social standings, but the dork just didn’t want you to be hospitalized and a criminal simultaneously.” Though, as she spoke, a tender expression stole over her as if she were speaking of the flavor of a favorite childhood dessert. “I suppose the better question here is what will you do if you can’t get to where you need to?”

            Harley didn’t reply.

            “Ooh, somehow, your silence is _so_ much worse than an answer. Let’s go.”

            Arkham’s great, yawning doors stood closed and loomed high when they ascended the last of the doorsteps. Once, twice, four times Selina tried the buzzer system, but no reply came.

            “Is there ever a time of day when a guard isn’t there to answer?”

            “Nope. Lock-pick?”

            “Lock-pick. Yours or mine?”

            Harley glanced down at her crutches. “Well, my hand is kind of broken at the moment, so…”

            “Oh, right, right. Gimme a minute.”

            Harley eased herself down to sit on the stoop, realizing absently that she’d felt sort of sick since she woke up at the hospital. It felt real, yet nearly intangible; she chalked it up the anxiousness of having seemingly lost Ivy to the ether.

            She closed her eyes and focused instead on what their lives would be like upon reuniting. They would go back to the hideout, surely. Someone would have to move to the other’s room, and Harley had a strange hunch it would be her. Her mind brought to surface images of long nights in Pam’s arms; of being at last safely weighted somewhere in the world. That was all she wanted, after all, to have a place to rest. After so many years of running without realizing, it was nice to finally have somewhere to lie still and catch her breath.

            The door swung open to the sight of a dozen unconscious guards out flat on the ground.

            “Oh no,” Selina rolled the nearest one over, finding that his eyes were dilated and a sloppy, smitten grin was on his face. “Well, she was definitely _here_ , too. I guess all we need to do is follow the trail of bodies and we’ll eventually find our way to her.”

            “Bodies are my favorite kind of trails,” Harley tried for a flippant bravado, but knew she failed. “Y’know, right after blood and breadcrumbs.”

            It wasn’t just a few guards. Seemingly every person in the old insane asylum was under Ivy’s trademark stupor. Less lethal than Joker gas, surely, but still medically unpleasant. Ivy’s first cell was Harley’s current cell, and they occasionally shared it together, depending on how many inmates were incarcerated and how many were roaming free at the time.

            She expected a long tangle of rose-red hair, cautious eyes the color of dewy grass to greet her from within the cell, but it was dormant. Cautiously, Harley pushed open the ajar cell while Selina lingered warily behind her. The only thing within was a note on the bed, written in Ivy’s curvy scrawl:

_You’re too sentimental. I figured you would come here first. Find me where we fell._

* * *

 

            Too sentimental. She was the one leaving her clues all over the city to find where she was, not Harley. Out of curiosity, she and Selina stopped by the museum she and Ivy had met at during their first impromptu heist, but found nothing there aside from the same old exhibits and bleary-eyed school children on a class trip.

            “You can’t come with me this time,” Harley placed a hand over Selina’s when she parked the car at the side of an old dirt road. “It ain’t safe. And Red…I feel like she just wants me to find her. Why else have all the messages?”

            “I get it; you guys want to be alone to have sex.”

            “Cat!”

            “Come on, like you guys _won’t_ get it on after being apart so long?”

            “It ain’t like that,” Harley chewed on the end of her pigtail. “Red and I ain’t ever done it before. She doesn’t think it’s all that great, and Joker…well, we all have our problems that hurt to look back on.”

            Selina slid her keys out of the ignition with wide, dumbfounded eyes. “You mean…you mean you two have…never…not _once?_ ”

            Harley shook her head.

            “Wow. Huh. Okay. That’s actually kind of sweet, especially considering the way Ivy throws her sensuality around like a boomerang at strangers all the time. It must mean something, I guess. Well, good luck in there with…whatever you guys end up doing. Talking? Are you guys just going to talk?”

            “What, like you and your B-Guys don’t talk?”

            Selina turned up her nose in a huff. “Go talk to your bean sprout, Harl. I’ll be here, trying to imagine Ivy giving a gushy speech. I wonder how many plant puns she’ll throw in. If it’s more than twenty, you owe me money; the word ‘blossoming’ is considered a free space.”

            Heart heavy, Harley set off down the path, the sign welcoming her to Toxic Acres nearly fallen over since the last time her feet had touched this road.

            The neighborhood itself was largely the same; rows and rows of identical little houses that would be quaint if not for the large amounts of decay and discoloration from all the toxicity in the air. Despite the metallic smell of chemicals in the dingy air, the plants in the area were in full bloom, defying logic solely to please their newly returned mistress. The hand Harley had on her crutch trembled just slightly, other parts of her mimicking the motion.

            It was anger. Anger at having woken up alone, at having been left at a hospital, at having found out her mother had been made privy to everything she so desperately tried to keep tamped down this past few years, but most importantly anger at having been so scared this whole while. She reached the doorstep of the largest house in the ghost town, ready to throw open the door to start in on a shouting match she was sure Selina would hear all the way from the car.

            _Oh, God_. Harley’s own thoughts sounded as breathless as she was, and not from the strain of her journey. _None of that…none of that matters. She’s so perfect I could just die._

The light of the sun drifted hazily behind Pam from the window, obscured by dust and the neighborhood’s own pollution. She spun to face Harley, her bright red hair making a perfect arc to reveal a face she had not seen clearly for the first time in over a month.

            The crutch fell to the floor, and on uneven footing Harley hobbled to cross the distance, all but falling into Pam with hands reaching up to her face.

            “I ain’t dreaming?” She asked between kissing Ivy’s face, always so smooth, the smell of a bouquet overtaking her sense of smell. “You’re really here. For true.”

            “For true,” Ivy took one of Harley’s hands in her own, smiling sadly. “I missed you, sunflower.”

            “You just saw me.” Harley laughed, rubbing her tears away with the back of her hand, but Ivy took that one as well, leaning down to kiss the moisture away. Harley shuddered. “But I missed ya, too. It’s like I forget, like I forget how much I love you until I see you, and I fall all over again. Let’s go home.”

            Ivy pulled back. Away from Harley’s tears, Harley’s arms, but kept her hands in hers so she could stand upright. Never before had Harley seen such immense sadness on one person’s face; there was a smile, sure, but it made Ivy appear all the sadder.

            “Come on…”

            “I can’t,” Pam stated flatly. “I can’t go home.”

            “Well…okay, then I’ll stay here with you. Like old times. Like the first time. That was it, right? You wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t it. This is where we fell in love.”

            Ivy arched a brow. “Did we?”

            “Red, you’re scaring me.”

            “I’m scared, too, Harley.”

            “What for? I’m here. We’re both here. I can stay with you. I love you.”

            “You can’t stay, Harley.” Ivy turned her head away, her profile sharp as if cut with a knife. “During school, did you have friends?”

            “Sorta,” Harley answered automatically, an instant response from such a sudden question. “Not really. I lived in a neighborhood with mostly old folks. Other kids thought I was too weird. I was too loud and a liar; no one liked me, really.”

            “What about college?”

            “I was too focused on…I had to prove to everyone, I had to prove to them I could be someone—Red, come on, what’s with these questions?”

            “And after college, you went right to working for Arkham, right? Have you ever been anywhere outside of your hometown and Gotham? Have you ever—”

            “Stop it! Red, just come home with me, please!”

            Ivy stared into Harley, her green eyes so bright between the narrow slits of her eyelids they almost glowed. Gently, so gently, she brushed a lock of Harley’s hair behind her ear.

            “Harley,” she loved hearing her name come from between those lips. “I’m dying.”

            Bile rose in Harley’s throat. “Q-Quit playin’, Red. This is the kinda joke Selina would—”

            Removing her hands from Harley, Ivy lifted up the fabric of her sweater to reveal her torso. The normally unmarred, smooth surface was splotched and mottled in unspeakable grotesque discoloration, dark and foreboding like so many ink stains on clean paper. Unthinkingly, Harley reached out to touch the exposed skin, as if hoping the bruising would rub off on her fingertips. Ivy flinched, but made no move to remove Harley’s touch.

            “We were both in terrible shape down in Croc’s tunnel. But you…you were _dying_. I could feel your pulse tapering off, I could see your bones sticking out of so many places; your blood was everywhere in the water, it seemed there was so little left for you. I made a quick decision. My toxins are lethal to others, but act like medicine to me. You needed it more than I would…but it took so much, Harley. Croc was joking all the while about true love’s kiss as I administered my toxins…you were still dying in my arms…and when I felt that tiny…that tiny _heart_ , I had to…”

            “You gave it all to me,” Harley spoke to the floor, feeling hot tears slip down her nose and onto the hardwood. “You gave it all to me, and left none to fix yourself with! Is it too late? Why didn’t you stay at the hospital?! They could fix you!”

            “No, they couldn’t. I’m far too much plant to be saved by man’s medicine, not in this way.”

            “So there…so there ain’t nothin’…you’re just…you’re just gonna _die_ , is that it? How long, Pamela? How long until I get to watch you fucking shrivel up and keel over?”

            “Don’t speak to me that way!” Ivy snapped, teeth bared like an angry dog. “This wasn’t a noble sacrifice, Harl. I didn’t save your life in the hopes of getting you to love me more, or getting something to lord over you. I saved your life because the world is far better off with you in it. I’ve lived in Gotham for a third of my life, and I’ve never met anyone more _alive_ than you are. Everyone in this godforsaken pustule of a city is a walking corpse, and yet you alone walk around with a beating heart. When you were dying, I asked myself if this is what love is like. If it’s living until you find someone who is more alive than you could ever hope to be. And when you began to live again in my arms, down in that cold dark tunnel, I knew what I had to do.

            “You haven’t experienced anything, Harl. Since you’ve come to this city, it’s been one big event after the next. Joker, the asylum, a life of crime, getting mixed up with me and our stray cat—leap after leap. Life isn’t always about the louder moments, but the gentle in-betweens. You told me, Harley, that you want to _live_. You can’t do that here. No one can. Everyone in Gotham is dying, and if you stick around, so will you.”

            “I DON’T CARE ABOUT THAT,” Harley burst out, ripping her hands from Ivy’s. “I care about _you!_ I don’t…I _can’t_ live…not without…”

            Ivy, without a word, turned her back toward Harley, and headed out through the back door. Harley called her name, scrambling to pick up her crutches, and hurried after her as fast as she could, still saying her name into the wind. In the center of the yard was a tree she had never seen before; it must have grown there in the time they had been away from the abandoned neighborhood. It was only taller than Ivy by a few feet as she stood with her back braced against the wood.

            Harley stood, breathless and half in tears, before Pam. Pain ate away at her as she had never felt before; her bones aching and muscles groaning and her heart screaming from inside her chest. She watched as Pam pressed two fingertips to a knot in the tree, and did not move when she presented those fingers to her mouth, spying that they were sticky with sap.

            “Taste it,” Ivy urged, but did not move herself closer. With sunlight on her face, Harley could see dark circles like bruises under her eyes.

            Harley pressed her trembling lips to Pam’s fingertips, kissing the soft skin there. Tears were hot in Harley’s eyes again as she began to realize what was about to unfold.

            “It’s ya toxins,” she muttered, “the stuff I’m immune to.”

            “Exactly right.” Ivy tilted her head back, and it was as if the branches above her head shifted so the sun could touch all of her. “You have no idea what my powers have brought to life in you, Harley. You have no idea how much things are going to change.”

            “They don’t have to!” It was the shrillest whisper to ever come from Harley’s lungs. “Stay with me, Pamela. Don’t leave me alone. I can’t—I _can’t_ …”

            “You have no idea what you’re capable of, Harley. You’re stronger than you think. Braver than you know. You also have no idea if you love me.”

            “Yes, I do! After all this, ya think I’m still—!”

            “No. Don’t. I’m not saying that you’re faking it, or lying, all I’m saying is that you _don’t know_. If Joker hadn’t held me hostage, would you have ever said that you love me, Harley? You went straight from having no one, to relying on Joker, to relying on me. I couldn’t live with myself if I were nothing but a new illness for you, sweet pea. I don’t want to be the thing that brings you back to the dark again.”

            For the first time in Harley’s life, she was speechless. How could she tell her that it was impossible for her to go back to that dark place again, when Ivy was her sunshine? Ivy always said there was no sunlight in Gotham, and Harley would have believed it, had Ivy not already been in her life.

            “I do love you, Pamela.” Harley murmured. “More than you know.”

            “And I love you,” a broken smile slivered between Ivy’s lips, “even if you discover you don’t. This tree I’m leaning against is one I created myself, through intense cross-pollination and inter-breeding. It will keep me alive, and slowly heal me. As I am now, I’m nearly human, and it is literally killing me. This tree will reintroduce my toxicity back into my system, and regenerate my damaged tissues. But it will take a while.”

            “How long?” The words felt like a curse.

            “Six months,” Ivy stated in that clinical way of hers, when the matters were heavy and could tread into tender territory, “maybe a decade.”

            Harley breathed in sharply, trying to adopt her own old stoic nature from a far-off time of lab coats and glasses. “And it’s the only way? There’re no alternatives?”

            “The alternative is I stay outside and live the next six to eight hours as a human, dying a slow, terrible death.”

            A long, shuddering silence fell over them.

            Harley rushed forward and crushed Pam into a bone-crushing hug, crying into her as if she were a mother on her deathbed.

            “When you come back,” she blubbered, “ _when_ you come back, and I still love you, I wanna get married. I wanna little wedding, and a pretty dress, and you’ll wear the prettiest green. The park, we’ll do it in the park, by the lake. Marry me, Red. Marry me.”

            A soft kiss, and Harley’s head was sent spinning. Her thoughts were a whirlwind, her stomach was in knots. It wasn’t fair. They should have had years together, dozens and dozens; they should have started their new lives right away, and now Joker was even taking that, even the sweetness of their last kiss.

            “Always together, Red.”

            “Always together, Harl.” Ivy whispered.

            With an exhalation of breath, the bark of the tree creaked and expanded, overtaking Pam. In the woodwork, there was the faintest suggestion of where Ivy’s face was, and again Harley pressed her lips to hers, tears slipping from between her fluttering eyelids.

            Harley fell to the ground, and curled up tight in the soil between Pam’s roots.

* * *

 

            Night had fallen by the time she woke again, still curled up in Ivy’s wooden embrace. In her dreams, the warm sunlight and soil was Ivy’s hair, holding her safe and warm

            A hand was on her shoulder, and a muffled voice spoke to her. She sat up to find a dark silhouette with their back to the night sky. Harley hardly had time to fear before the stranger frantically spoke up to placate her fright.

            “S’okay, Harley! It’s me!”

            “Selina?” Harley squinted. “What the hell d’ya got on your face?”

            It was like a black oxygen mask, with a small circular vent in the center. “It’s a portable gas mask doohickey from the cat suit—well, actually I snagged it off of one of Batgirl’s outfits a few years ago and I’ve kept it around since.”

            “Why’re you here?” Her words were devoid of inflection. She felt scraped clean, hollowed out. Highs and lows she was used to. Feeling _nothing_ hurt more than feeling everything, somehow.

            “Ivy gave me a letter in the hospital,” Selina sat down opposite her in the darkness. “She told me to open it when I was alone and not tell you about it, but fuck that. It had her entire…plan mapped out, right down to the freaky tree thing. God, she’s scary smart. Her notes told me to just take you to the doctor to find out, but I think you should read this now.”

            “In the dark?”

            A flashlight lit up in Selina’s hand. “Smart ass.”

            It was indeed Ivy’s whole plan. From leaving the hospital, to the tree, just as Selina said. It was clear that Ivy had little warmth for Selina, because the letter read with as much sincerity as a grocery list.

            The sheet beneath that was odd. It was a medical chart, from Harley’s most recent hospital stay. Harley was a little out of practice for reading the things, but…

            … _And when I felt that tiny…that tiny_ heart _…_

“I’m pregnant?” Harley pressed a hand to her stomach. “Eight weeks? That can’t be right! Joker and I—we were apart for—”

            “The letter beneath it explained it all,” Selina’s voice was low and hard to gauge without seeing her face in the dark. “Her toxins did more than bring you back. You…miscarried when you fell from Joker’s cell to Croc’s.”

            “She wasn’t just savin’ me,” Harley sniffled, her hand squeezing tight around a tree’s root in the soil. “Oh, _Red_ …”

            “There are plane tickets in the envelope, too. And instructions on how to extract money from a few Swiss bank accounts. And a smaller envelope,” Selina slipped something out of her pocket and held it out for Harley to take, “addressed to you.”

            With shaking hands, Harley opened the envelope to find a small, single sheet of paper within:

            _Please keep living._

_—Red_


	6. Only Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ivy takes care of some last-minute business while Harley's unconscious in the hospital.

           Death wasn’t anything like Pam ever expected. From a subtle fade of light, to a crash and bang, she had run through the possibilities multiple times when locked up behind Joker’s cell. Never had she believed it would be full of tears from blue eyes, like rain from two small skies, and a kiss of more woe, like Juliet and her Romeo. She could hardly hear a thing, and sight was as if staring skyward from the bottom of some dim sea. From blue skies rained tears, from a face crowned with hair golden like the sun.

           She had lost faith in sunlight, but now it was all she believed.

            _Oh_ , Ivy thought, unable to give Harley the mercy of closing her eyes as the darkness cloaked her from all sides. Nothing would budge; her body had never before betrayed her so. _There she is. The reason…my reason…I wish…I could disappear without regret. Life was so much easier, before you. Plain and clear. Black and white. Green and meat. People and earth. I regret ever meeting you…I regret every touch, every kiss, and every moment before and between._

           “—promised! You said forever! You _said you’d never leave me!_ ”

_I regret it all. The bad and the good. I never intended to mean anything, before you. Damn you. How dare you take my simplicity?_

“…sorry, Red. I couldn’t protect…”

_Because now I’m someone to cry for._

“I hope we see each other again.”

_Damn._

_Damn._

_Damn._

* * *

 

           A brief glimmer of a life untouched by evil: Her skin, flushed and flecked with freckles, tender and peachy in a human way, the scorch of a dreamy summer noon, dresses flapping in the breeze as smooth, slender legs entwined gently on a blanket. Harley at her side. Whispers of marriage. A sweet kiss. And a promise of never forgetting. What a foolish dream. Of course it was.

           All beautiful things are.

* * *

 

           The perfect life, and it was ripped from her, with a crash to earth and a rush of putrid water, surging through her being. Synapses fired once more, burning her from the inside out as her muscles trembled and stretched. A phoenix out of soot, a flower from cracks in concrete, Poison Ivy rose alive and anew.

           It took what felt a long moment to understand her location; Croc’s cell was a dim otherworld. The smell of bodily waste and rotting food filled the air with choking density.

           And cackling. Terrible, gagging peals of laughter reverberated off the stone walls, the sound distorted by the surface of the water.

           Ivy approached. Were it even a fraction like human, she would have felt sympathy for the pathetic creature. Its spine bent clean in half, bone jutting through the skin of the stomach, and blood spurting from its mouth. The thing turned its head, beady green eyes finding hers in the near dark as she towered impassively over him.

           “I’ll never leave,” the words came from Joker like a puff of smoke from wet lungs. “You’ll never be free of me. I’ve been _inside_ of you, of both of you. Especially her. I’ll stay forever, inching in and out, over and over, seeding and sprouting again and again. I can die a thousand times, and you’ll never be free of me. Harley is my ultimate punch-line.”

           Ivy snatched up the wretched thing by the collar. Somewhere in the darkness, Waylon stirred. Ivy stamped toward him, and for the first time in months, their eyes met. His eyes had never appeared human to her, before now. Perhaps he was thinking the same of hers.

           “Dinnertime, Croc.”

           Unflinching, she watched every moment of Croc ripping Joker apart, cursing the bitterness of his bleached flesh and savoring the marrow. She had to watch, had to be sure. If she didn’t watch it all, she knew, somehow, he would crop back up. Until her stomach churned, she stared at Croc as he devoured only the skull and spine, her eyes burning from lack of blinking. All the while, Waylon stared into her.

           This was a bond neither could go back from.

           “ _Cherie_ ,” Croc intoned in that crackling voice of his, the clicks and rumbles of something not quite human, “I can hear her fading.”

           Pam registered the splashes of her quick footsteps before she knew she was moving. How had she not seen before? The blood in the water, the bones rumpled and warped beneath Harley’s bruised skin…

           “I can smell it on her,” Waylon’s words were like a slap in the silence as she cradled Harley, wide-eyed and frozen, “the smell my mama when she got the shift. She smells late.”

            _Seeding and sprouting again and again_.

           “No,” Ivy mouthed. “Oh no no no no no no no—”

           And she kissed her. Every little bit of toxin, everything Ivy had flowing in her veins, she forced Harley to swallow. It was crude, but far less cruel than her own transformation with the same substances. At least Harley had the dignity of being fully clothed, of not being strapped to a table, of being with someone…someone who loved her.

           And she felt it. A small thing, a wonderful thing, a tiny, fluttering heart through the bond of sharing her very life force with Harley, with the little lump growing inside her.

           “It’s okay, sunshine,” Ivy whispered into Harley’s lips as her girl began to tremble and splutter, “Batman will be here soon.”

* * *

 

           Out of all places in Gotham, the hospital hit Ivy worst. So many layers of steel and granite, coupled with so many gallons of synthetic chemicals, it was enough to drive a girl—

           “Batty,” Ivy intoned at the sound of boots making light contact with the windowsill outside. “No offense, but unless you’re toting a rather expensive Get Well Soon gift, you aren’t welcome.”

           “This is the hospital, Pamela.” Always playing that inexhaustible knowledge of his, even when a moment was otherwise benign. Selina sure knew how to pick them. “And it’s after visiting hours; you’re no more welcome at Harley’s bedside than I am.”

           “Why do you call her Harley, but you insist on using my old name?” Ivy hunched her shoulders, shifting more of her weight to her arms propped on Harley’s cot. The metal folding chair beneath her was still cold, even though she had been sitting in it for hours. Or perhaps she had gone numb. “It’s cruel.”

           “How is she?”

           “Stable,” Ivy answered, unused to so much relief present in her own tone. “It’s miraculous.”

           “I’m no fool, Isley.”

           Ivy rolled her eyes. “I would think that after so many years of proving to you otherwise you would start to see that you _are_.”

           Batman squinted. “You did something to her. In Killer Croc’s cell. The fall wouldn’t have done much to you, with your regenerative abilities, but Harley should be paralyzed. Or dead. What did you do?”

           “Your answer lies in your own rhetoric, detective.” Ivy wrapped her fingers around Harley’s. “Why are you really here? I doubt you came just to take me in for breaking hospital rules. The only criminal act that could be performed in this room tonight is if you take me away from her.”

           “The crime scene investigators had a little trouble locating something at the site.”

           “A degree in a more lucrative field?”

           “Joker’s head.”

           “Oh,” Ivy arched a brow. “Now that I don’t know a _thing_ about. The three of us fell hard. Perhaps the putrid little thing popped off and rolled somewhere?”

           “What you and Croc did was inhuma—”

           “You say that as if Joker was human!” Ivy snapped, standing from her seat. Harley’s hand clenched just a bit in hers, snapping her back to something like calm. “That madman was a _monster_. You have no idea what he’s done. To me. To Harley. A monster’s actions aren’t always physical, Batman. A monster calls from the dark. A monster specializes in fear. Joker wasn’t out to kill Harley, or me. He was out to ruin us both. He was a rabid dog that needed putting down.”

           “And so you decided to play executioner. You may think yourself a goddess, Pamela, but you aren’t a bringer of divine justice. Joker should have stood trial for his crimes.”

           “Oh, hush,” Ivy ran slow fingers through the sticky mess of Harley’s hair. Her body was fighting the toxins. She hadn’t expected this. The vaccination which gave Harley immunity could only stave off small amounts of the pure poisons that Ivy secreted. Touches, hugs, kisses… “You’re just upset you’ve lost your other half. You and Joker; you were a cyclone of yin and yang rushing through this city. You’re probably dying inside, at the absence of him. It’s like losing a limb.”

           “You’ve denied Harley the right to making Joker pay; she should have been able to testify—”

           “Don’t even try and finish that statement! Joker goes to trial. Joker goes to Arkham. Joker breaks out. Joker hurts Harley. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.”

           “What about the lives he took?”

           “Irrelevant. No one cared that Harley was in the state she was in. No one cared that Harley was sunken in so deep with that lunatic. The only way anyone would have seen her was if she became the next life Joker took. And Gotham would bow its head for a moment of silence, before carrying on, business as usual, leaving the burden of mourning Harley to one person. No one ever gave a damn about Harley. But I did. I do. I did what had to be done. Harley no longer has to live her life as a walking pending obituary. She’s free.”

           “She might hate you. When she wakes up, she may never want to see you again.”

           “And I would be fine with that. More than fine. All that matters to me is that she does wake.” Ivy pressed her forehead to Harley’s, and kissed her flushed cheek. Not long ago, the heat in her face would have been for different reasons. Not from a fever, not from her body trying to burn out the only thing keeping her alive. “You can go now, Batman.”

           But when Ivy raised her head, there was only an empty room, and a window that remained locked and shut.

           “And now you’re hallucinating, Pamela.” Ivy grasped at her stomach as new wave of pain launched through her. “Who would have thought Batman would be the physical representation of my conscience?”

           As Ivy spoke to the emptiness, she was sure Harley would have laughed at her joke. After all, she loved complicated psychoses.

* * *

 

           “Well, ain’t ya just a sight for sore eyes?”

           “Every sight for you is sore, at least for one half of your face. Isn’t that right, Harv?”

           Harvey frowned at Ivy with his good side. She had seen him in worse shape, honestly, and usually from her own hands. His hospital bed sported a shiny pair of handcuffs attached to his wrist; her fingers played with the cuff occupied by the bedrail.

           “Joker’s a sonuvabitch. He deserved it, Petal. Ya did the right thing. Any person, plant, or maker would tell ya the same.”

           “Always such a rough talker; suppose I have a type after all,” Ivy arched a brow.

           “God, you’re scary when you smile. Never seen happiness look so evil,” Harvey smirked back. “Took good care of your girlfriend while I could—although, I tried to talk her outta her stupid plan to go see Joker herself. Thought she’d go nutso again. Good thing she don’t listen to no one. You’d be dead if she weren’t so bullheaded. Your girl’s got a skull thicker than the walls of Fort Knox.”

           “I wanted to thank you, Harv,” Ivy admitted in a low tone, moving her hand to his bandaged one. He laced their fingers together. “For staying with her. Befriending her. I owe you.”

           “I’d ask for a kiss,” he said in that gravelly voice of his, “but I didn’t come to a hospital to die. Surprised you’re not by your favorite dessert’s bedside.”

           “I’m actually in the process of putting some things together for her. When she wakes up. Harley deserves a good life. After all that’s been done to her, around her, she deserves the life she could have had, a life she can’t build for herself.”

           Two-Face shook his head, chuckling. “You and her. Never seen a pair of saps like you. Ya got the same look she gets, when she’s ready to throw down anything to get to ya. You two are gonna go far.”

           “I know she will.”

           Harvey narrowed his eyes. Suspicious. He didn’t know her best, but he knew her well. “You deserve good things too, Pamela.”

           “No,” Ivy turned her gaze out the window, where a young sparrow had just landed on the sill, casting a fluttering silhouette over the room. “I don’t deserve her at all.”

* * *

 

           Ivy couldn’t recall the last time she’d worn these clothes. A button-down, a pencil skirt, pantyhose and pumps. Every now and again, she would glance into the rearview mirror and start; it was difficult to recognize herself when she drew back the levels of chlorophyll that colored her flesh the shade of green she loved so much.

           Her mother disapproved of her skin as she disapproved of many things, though changing it did nothing to change the look of disdain on her face when she answered the door.

           “Pamela,” the name was like an oft used curse from her lips, “come in.”

           The Isley family home was as stately as ever. Pristine and white, with brass fixtures and gold trinkets. A pure little white life was all that awaited Ivy if she had followed her mother’s path, but she was meant for greener pastures. Creatures of the wild were impossible to tame.

           “Why are you here, Pamela?”

           “Don’t call me that.”

           Mrs. Isley’s eyes widened. “Young lady, your tone is—”

           “Mother,” the tiredness in Ivy’s voice was alarming even to her. It wouldn’t be long now. “I haven’t been your daughter since I left this place nearly twenty years ago. You know what I’ve come for. Let’s not make this ugly and speed this along.”

           The wine in Mrs. Isley’s glass sloshed wildly as she swirled it in her many-ringed hand. Her long dress and finely coiffed hair gave Ivy the impression that she was due somewhere refined not too long from now. Even though she knew she was coming. Blood may be thicker than water, but Ivy’s blood was poison now, and to her mother that was as good as Ivy being dead.

           “You want your inheritance, then?” Mrs. Isley raised a brow, a gesture so like Ivy’s she had to force her own down. “The full million? After all you’ve put your father and I through all these years? After traipsing around that bloodstain you call a city with your thuggish friends? After _whoring_ your way around, throwing yourself at any man, making a spectacle of yourself? After throwing away your career for a life of crime, like your harlot of a girlfriend—”

           Darkness fell over the room as the potted ferns at the windows engorged and overtook the sunlight pouring into the sitting room.

           “Mother,” Ivy stated with ice in her tone, “we both know I can have the money taken from you at any time. What I’m offering you is a weight off your soul. Give me my inheritance now, and you’ll never hear from me again.”

           “I haven’t heard from you in almost two decades, Pamela.”

           “I’m here now, aren’t I? Do you know what’s stopping me from robbing your precious trophy friends blind? What’s stopping me from brainwashing their husbands into my unwitting slaves? What’s stopping me from ruining your entire life in one fell swoop? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. If you thought my existence was tarnish on your reputation before, you have no _idea_ the Hell I can bring your way just by walking out that door.”

           Utmost fury stained Mrs. Isley’s face a shade of red almost as marvelous as the hair on her head. With stiff footsteps, she made her way to the nearby desk and retrieved a checkbook from the drawer.

           “I was a good mother, Pamela!” The pen in her hand made deep gashes on the paper as she filled it out. “Your father and I gave you the best that money could buy, and how do you repay us? Backstabbing! Blackmail! Frivolity and hedonism! Homos—”

           “I have a higher purpose, Mother.”

           “All we wanted in return was a little reciprocity! Respect! For you to lead a good life, have a few children. And you threw it all away for what?” She extended the check in her hand with red-nailed fingers. “Some painted-up floozy you met in an asylum?”

           “For Harley,” there was no fighting the tenderness in her voice when she took the check, “I would give anything.”

           Her mother scornfully curled her lip. “Oh, please, Pamela. _Love?_ We both know you’ve never loved anyone.”

           “You’re wrong,” Ivy muttered, heading toward the door. _I loved you._

* * *

 

           The phone was a weight in Ivy’s trembling hand. She’d never done anything like this before. What could she even say? Words were one of her greatest allies, when body language failed. She could sweet talk her way through any situation, any bump in the road or kink in a plan. It seemed that when things pertained to Harley Quinn, her usual skills were thrown out the window. Perhaps that was part of the attraction.

           “Hello?” The voice on the phone answered. “Quinzel residence, how can I help you?”

            _Hello, I’m your daughter’s girlfriend_.

           “…Hello?”

            _That daughter you haven’t heard from in nearly ten years?_

“Who is this?”

            _You might know me as Poison Ivy, doctor turned messiah of the Greater Green. Perhaps you’ve heard of my work._

“I’m sick of perverts calling women who are home alone just to get their rocks off! I’d like to see ya pull this shit if ya were face to face with ya mother!”

            _God, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree_.

           “M-Mrs. Quinzel,” Ivy’s voice shook. “If I may have a moment of your time.”

           “Oh,” clearly, she was taken aback by a woman’s voice on the line. “I’m—sorry, about the shouting. It’s just, ya know, this day and age, men are constantly—”

           “I’m fully aware of the current state of _mankind_ , ma’am, and I concur, but that isn’t the concern at the moment. I’m calling about your daughter, Harleen Quinzel.”

           Ivy had to hold the phone at arm’s length to protect her ear from being deafened from the woman’s screaming. Apples and trees and the distance the fruit falls, always that way with mothers and daughters, it seemed. She thought of her own mother and a bitter taste manifested at the back of her throat.

            _Not now, you cannot win now._ Ivy swallowed hard against the bile. _Hate mankind, hate all humanity, but feign kindness, for Harley’s sake. For Harley there is no Mother, there is no Green, there is just her, and her future._

“Mrs. Quinzel,” Ivy interjected with as much ice as she could muster, “Harley has made many…many mistakes in her life, I’m sure. I’m also sure she’ll make many more. She’s brash and reckless and scatterbrained and flighty and absurd and foolish and dense and—”

           “Oi! I dunno who the hell ya think ya are, but the only one who can criticize my kid is _me_ , missy! Ya got that?!”

           Ivy pressed a palm to her forehead. This wasn’t how she wanted it to go. Where was that sweetness she promised herself to muster?

           “—but she’s also kind!” Ivy blurted, her hand trembling in her lap. “And forgiving and loving; even at her worst, she always tries to do what’s right for the people she loves. Even when they hurt her, break her, betray her, she’s the bravest—”

           “Ohhhh, I know who ya are,” Mrs. Quinzel sighed heavily.

           “Y-you do?”

           “You’re either the cat girl Harleen hangs out with, or the plant girl she’s always fawning over.”

           “Or? I thought you said you knew?”

           “Please, I can’t be held accountable for everything that kid of mine does. What’s she done now? Rob a bank? Mugged a guy? Harassed a guy? Assaulted the Pope? Did she mug and harass the Pope?”

           “The Pope?”

           “She’s has never liked the Pope, I dunno what it was, somethin’ about him just rubbed her the wrong way. Was it the Pope?”

           “It wasn’t the Pope,” Ivy muttered. “Mrs. Quinzel, Harley is in the hospital.”

           The words quieted Mrs. Quinzel’s babbling about Harley’s dislike for the figurehead, including childhood plans to sneak into the Vatican and stealing his hat. It was easy to envision the crackling silence of the phone receiver as Harley’s mother squeezing her phone, cracking the screen.

           And then crying. Quiet, soft crying.

           “M-Mrs. Quinzel?”

           “…No one’s ever bothered…ever bothered to tell me…before…. I’ve only ever heard details, bits ’n’ pieces from the news, even Harleen…tell me. Tell me about my daughter. What’s he done? What’s he done now?”

           And so Pam told her. How she and Harley met, how Joker had come and swept her up, and spit her out, over and over. All the pain, all the hurt, especially from her hands. And then the good. The happy times, the moments of laughter, all the times Harley had reawakened things Ivy thought long dead—kindness, empathy, _humanity_. She hadn’t even realized, until she was through, that she was crying, and laughing, all at once. So human, so frail.

           “Harley,” Mrs. Quinzel said in a warm voice, “do you love her? Really?”

           “Really,” Ivy stared into the passenger seat, where a stack of papers—hospital charts, plane tickets, bank statements—lay blinding in the sun. “Really.”

* * *

 

           “I talked to your mother today, Harl.” Ivy brushed some hair back from Harley’s face. So still, even blissful. “Wake soon, please? Please, please, please.”

           Ivy removed herself from where she knelt on the floor, and curled up, cold and achy beside Harley. It wouldn’t be long now; already she could feel her body wasting away.

            _Harley_ , the last time she put these words into thought felt so long ago, _I’m dying_.

           “‘You are my sunshine…my only sunshine…’” Ivy sniffled, burying her face in Harley’s shoulder. “‘You make me happy…when skies…are grey…you’ll never know _dear_ , how much I love you…please don’t take…my sunshine away.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all I have for this story for now. I've got an epilogue that will end this little saga rather nicely planned out, but idk when I'll end up putting it on paper. I'll be sure to post both here and Tumblr then.

**Author's Note:**

> Posted from my tumblr @amanda-jp.


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